


remember, remember

by seaweedbraens



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: A lot - Freeform, F/M, Hanahaki AU, Hanahaki Disease, Mentions of Death, Multi, Trigger Warning!!!, and stuff, but basically acceptance of death, dunno of this counts as suicide, there's like a lot of negative thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 13:12:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13167642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaweedbraens/pseuds/seaweedbraens
Summary: Percy could've lived the rest of his life with his soulmate just fine, but of course he had to cough up that damn flower, and now he can't live with her. Now he might not be able to live at all.





	remember, remember

**Author's Note:**

> before you start: warning!!! this fic contains a lot of mentions of death and basically the main character accepting death and nearly dying. if you're triggered by that in any way, please don't read further.
> 
> if you're still here, hi!!!! i'm vani and here is another soulmate fic because it's all i can write ahahahahahahahah //cries 
> 
> look at me dropping fics on like the last day of 2017 lmaooo
> 
> enjoy bbs :*

**remember, remember;**

**/**

The morning Percy meets his soulmate starts off like just any other: he oversleeps, spills coffee over own sleep-deprived self, takes a shower in frigid water that must be straight from the fucking North Pole, and wolfs down the semi-cold waffles that Jason’s left for him in the kitchen.

His phone has been buzzing since he’d cracked one sleepy eye open at around 10 a.m, something he’s been pointedly ignoring since he’d been awake enough to be aware of the noise; mostly because he knows it’s Piper, and it’s always fun to rile her up.

Pocketing his phone without a second glance at the screen, Percy exits his apartment with a yawn, absentmindedly running a hand through his hair. He’d glanced at himself in the mirror whilst exiting the shower long enough to know that he looks like a complete mess. He’s wearing his old AHS hoodie and sweatpants, he hasn’t combed his hair, and he hadn’t bothered to shave away the scruff collecting at his jawline. Piper’s going to kill him, but oh well, at least his face is clean.

Café Jupiter is about five minutes away, if he walks briskly, but it’s a breezy, cloudy morning, but Percy makes the walk longer by stopping at familiar little stores where the owners know him, and by the time he reaches the café, it’s 1:45 PM, twenty minutes since he shut his door behind him.

Piper darts out the door as soon as she spies him, wearing a worn denim jacket and an expression that screams murder.

“Percy,” she shrieks, because Piper is nothing if not loud, “you were supposed to be here _two hours_ ago.”

Wordlessly, Percy stalks past her into the café and orders a latte from Julia, the wide-toothed, smiling young girl at the counter, Piper right at his heels and snarling. Julia smiles at him, jerking her chin slightly in Piper’s direction and shrugging as if to say _you asked for this._ Percy winks jovially in response, which makes Julia giggle and Piper hiss.

Once he has his latte, he follows a still-swearing Piper to their usual table in the corner, where Jason is already seated, shaking salt on the tabletop and drawing patterns in the pile of grains with his finger. Piper throws herself next to Jason, glaring at Percy and swiping the salt Jason’s playing with off the table.

“Wow,” he says, “you made it.”

“Missed my alarm,” Percy says in response. “Or maybe I forgot to set it. Whatever. When’d you get here?”

“Ummm…” Jason checks his watch. “’Bout ten minutes ago.”

“What the hell,” Percy says to Piper, “Why’d you yell at me, he’s no better.”

“I had actual work, at least I didn’t oversleep —”

“Jason,” Percy snorts, “you’re taking extra classes because you’re failing Math, it’s not like you’re feeding the homeless—”

“I’ll deal with him later,” Piper snaps. “You, on the other hand—”

“I don’t get why you’re yelling at me, your friend hasn’t even gotten here yet,” Percy grunts in response.

Piper deflates slightly. “Her flight got a little delayed.”

Percy only rolls his eyes and settles comfortably into his seat, while Jason lets out a nearly comical groan before launching into a long description of all the places he should be rather than here. The library, for example. Piper’s friend, after all, he says, is moving to New York permanently, and so he can meet her at any time. Piper argues that yes, while that’s true, Annabeth is her best friend and they’ve been close practically since they exited the womb. They haven’t met in five years, and she’s on her way, Piper insists, waving her phone around as evidence, and Jason need not stay longer than fifteen minutes, and besides, she’d really, really like for her best friend to meet her boyfriend.

Percy sips his latte.

Jason, predictably, gives up easily — Percy doesn’t even blame him for his, as Piper is using her more compelling tone and squeezing his hand with both of hers. Piper can be very persuasive if she tries, especially when it comes to Jason: she knows this, and is clearly not holding back.

Percy busies himself with his phone, replying to a bunch of mails, swiping away all the messages Piper had sent him that morning — Piper squawks at this — and sighing as he reviews another roommate application.

Jason notices and winces. Easy for him, the dickhead. He’s the one moving out and leaving Percy to deal with all this crap.

Percy’s snorting at Leo’s desperate mail — _Perce, I promise I won’t bring my mechanics home, and does the cute redhead still live upstairs?_ — when Piper suddenly stands, waves frantically as though hailing a taxi, and yells, “Annabeth!”

Jason shoots to his feet, looking stricken, and Percy rises grudgingly, too, watching Piper dart around the little tables to throw her arms around a taller blonde who’s barely walked through the door.

A chorus of “I can’t believe you’re here!”/ “ _I_ can’t believe I’m here!” and Piper finally detaches herself, grabbing the other girl by the arm and dragging her to their table. Jason immediately moves to shake her hand as Piper introduces him, and Percy takes the chance to look her up and down.

His first thought is that Annabeth Chase could probably kick his ass in two seconds flat, leave him for dead, and still have energy to spare. She’s tall — her full height doesn’t quite reach his or Jason’s, but she is much taller than Piper — almost comically so. Her hair is the color of sand on the beach, but not the wet kind: it’s the color of nice soft sand that’s in the sun, the sand you can lie down in and it feels like a pillow. She’s got toned arms and legs — adding to Percy’s _she could kick my ass_ theory — and her eyes, though sparkling while she smiles at her friend, are steely within. No wonder Jason had looked so scared looking at her.

“—And this is Percy, Jason’s roommate, and one of my closest friends,” Piper says. Percy jolts embarrassingly at the mention of his name, glances quickly at Annabeth, wondering if he should shake her hand, but deciding that she might judo flip him, he ends up settling for smiling and saying, “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.” Annabeth’s smile is friendly, if a little detached, but she still seems genuine enough for Percy to decide he likes her. Piper sits back down next to Jason, leaving Annabeth to scoot into her seat beside Percy, and the two girls immediately launch into a conversation about old friends and careers and love lives.

Time seems to fly by, all of a sudden, and Percy notes with pleasure that Annabeth has a sharp tongue and is so passive-aggressive that it hurts. She tells them about the annoying couple on the flight (“I’m sorry, but don’t grope her ass on the way to the bathroom where you’re probably gonna make out anyway, everyone can see and it’s not a pleasant sight,”) and about how fucking hard it was to catch a taxi (“I’m, like, 90 percent sure they stop only for tourists who’ll probably be staying in some hotel far enough away for them to get a lot of cash,”), but her tone is more playful than whiny, and her stories are really funny. Pretty soon, he’s adding to the conversation with anecdotes of his own, and even Jason gets over his nervousness and begins to laugh.

About an hour later, Jason decides he wants a burger, or something, and Annabeth rises to join him, leaving Percy and Piper alone.

“You like her?” Piper’s eyes are shining and she looks so happy that Percy would find it hard to say no even if he didn’t like Annabeth. Good thing he doesn’t have to lie.

“She seems nice, and she’s really funny,” he says. “I can see why you like her.”

“Annabeth’s the best.” Piper smiles, looking down at the table almost bashfully. “I’m so glad she’s here, I think she’d love it, and I’d love for all of us to hang out more often.”

Which seems like an innocent enough suggestion, but something about the way Piper’s stressed on the word _us_ makes him do a double take. Sure enough, she’s grinning her signature matchmaker smile, the same smile she’d smiled right before setting Percy up with Rachel. And Calypso. And Kelly.

“Look,” he begins in a warning tone, pointing a finger at her, “don’t go and get any ideas —”

Jason and Annabeth return with drinks and a heaping plate of fries, talking about baseball, and Percy cuts himself off, choosing instead to glare at Piper as if to say _Don’t even think about it._

Piper shrugs in what Percy hopes is defeat, but she drops the subject, at least until Annabeth checks her watch and tells them she has to leave.

“I’ll come by later to help you unpack,” Piper offers. To Percy and Jason, she says, “Annabeth’s rooming in Will’s old place, by the way.”

“Oh, nice,” Jason says. “That’s not too far from our building.”

“We’re about five minutes away in that direction—” Piper jabs her thumb behind her, “and Percy’s about two minutes the other way. You’re, like, right in the middle, this is great.”

“Oh, nice.” Annabeth does look genuinely happy to hear this. She hefts her bag over her shoulder. “Well, I should get going: I promised the landlady I’d be by to get the keys. It was great seeing you.”

She hugs Piper, whispers something in her ear about Jason that makes Piper blush, then shakes Jason’s hand and is about to turn to Percy when Piper, the little shit, decides, for the first time in her life, probably, that she’s going to drop the empty tray back at the front counter. She grabs the tray eagerly, squeezing past them and forcing Percy and Annabeth to be smushed against each other awkwardly against their table. Piper sends Percy and evil grin that only he can see, but before he can kill her, he feels a small tingle go up his arm, right at the small patch of skin where Annabeth’s elbow had first touched his.

Things begin to happen all at once. Percy hisses in shock, rolling up his sleeve to reveal an intricate tattoo etching itself down his arm, extending from the point of contact upto his wrists. The design curls and twists and weaves quite beautifully, but Percy can only look in disbelief from his arm to Annabeth’s, where the exact same pattern is forming on her arm in the exact same place.

Piper drops the tray.

Jason’s hands cover his mouth, and Percy finally tears his gaze to meet Annabeth’s. Her grey eyes are wide open in horror. The tattoo still slithers around their arms. This can only mean one thing.

“You’re soulmates,” Jason gasps.

“ _No,_ ” Annabeth whispers.

“Well,” says Piper, “this makes my job a lot easier.”

**/**

There’s more banging at the door, and Jason calls out, in a voice that is both annoyed and amused, “Percy, come out of there.”

“No.” Percy’s voice is muffled, because his face is in a pillow.

“Talk it out to us,” Piper says soothingly.

“No.”

“Let’s leave him alone,” Jason suggests.

“He’s throwing a tantrum,” Piper sighs back.

“I can hear you,” Percy yells.

Jason sniggers: Percy hears Piper groan, and then she evidently pushes him away, because there’s the sound of a small grunt, and then Jason’s receding footsteps.

Piper’s voice is softer when she speaks. “How are you feeling?”

Truth is, Percy isn’t too sure. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in soulmates — it’s just that hardly anyone has the gene anymore. His mother has it, but since the chances of it being passed on were less than 10 percent, Percy hadn’t given it much thought. Until now, of course.

“I don’t know,” he replies honestly.

“C’mon,” says Piper bracingly, “you gotta give me more than that.”

He’s feeling a lot of things at the moment. It’s like when you’re being hit with too many emotions at once, and you end up just feeling blank and confused because you’re not sure _what_ to feel. It’s no use trying to explain this to Piper, he knows, so he pushes himself into a sitting position and tries to delve a little deeper.

Mostly, he decides, he’s just baffled. Percy’s seen movies about soulmates, read the novels. Having a scene straight out of those scripts happen to him is a little overwhelming. Does he want to have a soulmate? Well, yeah, he guesses. He’s cool with it, but he’d been prepared to go about love the usual way: waiting for someone to pop up into his life, someone he’d, well, fall in love with it. Annabeth…well. He’d liked her, yeah, for sure, but he’d only just met her, and Percy doesn’t just want to get into a relationship with someone he barely knows just because the universe, or whatever, is telling him to.

Which leads to her reaction. Percy had been perplexed, sure, by the sudden appearance of the mark, but Annabeth had been almost terrified by it. She’d even whispered a revolted _No_ before grabbing her bag, mumbling a hasty goodbye, and fleeing from the place. She hadn’t looked at him once.

He doesn’t blame her, but it still hurt a little.

And that surprised him, how much it hurt. Percy’s not perfect, but he surely can’t be the worst person to be soulbonded to, right? He’s a senior in college, captain of the swim team, about to get a degree and a job in marine biology. And, well, he’d not entirely bad-looking, if he does say so himself.

He’s being stupid and selfish. He knows this. He should put himself in her shoes.

Most of the feelings of frustration, he knows — even though he will never admit it, even to himself — are borne out of the feeling of elation that is buried deep down in him, beneath confusion and hurt and all the rest of it. He’s _happy_ he has a soulmate. This is something out of a fucking novel. He’s _excited._

And it really, really sucks that Annabeth isn’t.

Sighing, Percy stands and walks to the door — Piper yelps and jumps back when he opens it — and proceeds to pour himself a glass of juice from the fridge like he doesn’t give a fuck.

“Duuuude,” Jason crows from the sofa, “that tattoo looks niiiice.”

“Get off my sofa,” Percy demands. “Go get your own sofa in your new apartment. Traitor.”

“Blood traitor.”

“Who are you, Draco fucking Malfoy?”

“You’re both stupid,” Piper groans.

“Tell your stupid boyfriend to go back to his stupid girlfriend’s house,” Percy grunts.

“Stupid girlfriend is right here, and she ain’t all that stupid, y’know.” Piper slaps him upside the head, well aware that he’s not being serious. He’s happy for them, but it’s also kind of sad. A good roommate is hard to find.

Percy busies himself with covering his toast with Nutella, while Piper stares shamelessly at his soulmate tattoo. He holds it up for her to get a better look and she grins sheepishly, caught.

“Does it feel any different?” she asks.

“No,” he says.

“Did it hurt when you got it?”

“No,” he says, annoyed.

Piper pauses, then says quietly, “Man, that was a real shock.”

“You think?” Percy points a Nutella’d spoon at her. “And you didn’t make it any easier, with your stupid commentary.”

“I couldn’t help it! I’m ADHD!”

“ _I’m_ ADHD!” Percy yelps back. “You didn’t see me blurting out random shit!”

“Hey, we’re all one big ADHD family,” Jason tries. They both ignore him.

“No wonder she freaked out,” Percy snaps, “Because you couldn’t keep your nose out of it —”

“That’s not why she freaked out,” Piper snaps back. “She freaked out because her parents were soulmates, but her mom left and the soulbond broke and her dad had Hanahaki and he died.”

It’s silent for a while. Piper’s hands are over her mouth and she looks angry at herself for speaking. Percy can’t help but feel guilty over this new knowledge that he is sure he wasn’t ever supposed to know.

“That’s fucking messed up,” he says after a while.

“Hanahaki.” Jason shakes his head. “It was probably more common back then than it is now, but still…”

“You weren’t supposed to know that.” Piper’s eyes flutter shut. “Annabeth doesn’t like it broadcasted, and besides…” She looks at Percy. “Look, you’ve got to understand that she really, really didn’t want a soulmate. It’s just…some painful shit for her.”

Percy nods. He’s still hurt, but he gets where Piper is coming from. Annabeth’s story is straight from the news articles his mom used to click her tongue at when he was young: stories of broken soulbonds, and the inevitable Hanahaki that followed. But with the sudden decline in marked people with every generation, the disease was rare to occur, too, and so most people these days know nothing about the disease sans the name, Percy included. Annabeth must’ve gone through a lot as a child, he thinks with a pang, losing her father to a disease that was barely even around these days.

“Do you think…she’ll talk to me?” Percy asks hesitantly.

Piper wrings her fingers together. “I…don’t know.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Percy demands. “Look, I get it about her dad, and whatever, but…like. I dunno. We still gotta talk about this. I don’t care if being soulmates means nothing to her, but it matters to me.”

“Maybe leave her alone for a while,” Piper suggests. “I’ll try to talk her around. Just give her some space. For a while.”

He thinks about it, but it’s not a hard decision to make when Piper’s clasping her hands together and tilting her head and fixing him with the most sickeningly pitiful look he’s ever seen.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll leave her alone.”

**/**

And he does. Percy leaves her alone for a month. A _month._

And literally on the first day of the next month, he actively tries to seek her out, _thinking it’s a new day, a new life_ , and when he runs into her, alone, at Café Jupiter, he figures this is the perfect time to talk.

But Annabeth takes one look at him, gathers her laptop and coffee, and all but sprints out of the place with a speed Percy didn’t know she had. It’s then that he realizes that he hadn’t seen her around much the past month for good reason — he’d been avoiding her, sure, but she’d clearly been avoiding him, too.

Okay, he thinks, tough nut to crack, better luck next time —

Only it keeps happening, and then two whole weeks have passed, and Jason’s officially moved out, and Annabeth’s still avoiding him like the plague, and Percy’s feeling annoyed and lonely and just so _done._

“Have you seen Annabeth around?” he asks Piper casually.

Piper’s tone is guarded. “Not much, she’s pretty busy, you know.”

“Fucking liar,” Percy says in disgust.

Piper, who had been embroidering a complicated-looking flower onto a jacket, puts down the needle in frustration. “Look, Perce, I don’t know what you want me to do. I’ve talked to her, believe me I have, but she’s just as stubborn as you are about things sometimes, and, well, this is one of them. I’ve stopped arguing with her, and I don’t want to get into this with you again, either.”

“I did what you said,” Percy snaps. “I left her alone.”

“Yeah, okay, so go talk to her now if you want to!”

“I can’t do that when she’s playing this one-sided game of hide-and-seek with me all the goddamn time,” Percy says.

“Look harder, then,” Piper retaliates.

Percy is silent. Piper sighs. “Look, I know this isn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry, but I’m sick of the both of you complaining to me. You’re going to sort this out yourselves. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

“Fine,” Percy says dully. “I’ll just walk around the city and hope I bump into her.”

“You do that,” Piper says, picking up her work again.

“Thanks for the help.”

“Anytime.” Piper hums, apparently preoccupied, as Percy rises to leave. He wrenches the door open when she says in an undertone, “She’s stopping by tomorrow to pick up some notes.”

“Love you, Pipes,” he says.

“Get the fuck out of my apartment.”

The next day, Percy spies Annabeth exiting Piper’s apartment just as he’s climbing up the stairs — he murmurs a thanks to Piper — and before she can escape to the elevator, Percy bounds up to her side and says cheerfully, “Hey.”

Annabeth makes a vague noise in the back of her throat. She sounds like a dying squirrel, but Percy keeps the smile on his face.

“I’d like to talk to you,” he says.

“I kind of…don’t.” Her eyes widen fractionally. “I mean, I can’t. I’ve got a thing.”

“It’ll take five minutes, max.”

“My thing is pretty urgent, sorry —”

“One minute.”

“Um —”

“Thirty seconds.”

He watches her consider this, then nod, crossing her arms and taking two or three short steps backward. Her stiff posture and slightly winkled nose gives Percy the impression that she is in the presence of a revolting creature of some sort, like a dead rat, or a cockroach.

Now that he has the chance to say everything he’s been feeling since their marks matched, Percy is faced with the decision of what exactly to say to her, and his mind comes up with nothing. He makes a few gulping noises, debating how to start off, but there are so many things to say and so little time (fourteen seconds and counting), and her expression is really pissing off, so when Percy finally searches his brain, looking for anything coherent, anything at all, what comes out is not any of the eloquent speeches Percy had prepared before, but the words, “You’re being selfish.”

His statement hits her like a slap in the face. She takes a step back, letting her arms drop down to her sides.

“What?” she hisses.

“You heard me.” Percy decides to drop the pretence entirely, because you know what? He’s _mad_ about how she’s been acting. He’s been trying to be mature and understanding and empathetic all this time, but the fact of the matter remains that they are soulmates and there’s nothing either of them can do about it, and they can’t avoid it forever, and Percy’s sick of being the only adult in this less-than-ideal situation.

“I get that you’ve been through shit with soulmates and stuff, and no, Piper didn’t tell me anything specific,” he lies smoothly, because Annabeth had opened her mouth in horror — “And I get that you’ve probably got some painful memories and stuff, but that doesn’t mean we all had nice, happy lives. My mom had a broken soulbond —”

“That still doesn’t give you the right to ask Piper about me,” she snaps. “That’s personal.”

“I asked because you looked really scared that day, and I was worried about you and I wanted to understand you side of it,” Percy sneers back. “And like I said, Piper didn’t tell me anything much, she just said you’ve been through shit, and, by the way, that’s why I tried to give you space for a weeks, but we still have this-this bond, and —”

“Look, no offense,” Annabeth says cuttingly, “but I don’t really give a single shit about soulmates.” The words hurt much more than he’d like to admit.

“I don’t care!” Percy responds at once. “I don’t care, and literally that’s all I wanted to know from you, to know where you stood, but you’ve been refusing to talk or even _look_ at me, you’ve been going behind my back all this time, telling my friends to lie to me about where you’ve been, where you’re at —”

He stops, but she offers no argument, instead dropping her gaze in what might be shame. Percy feels a sense of victory.

“Soulmates…well, I do give a shit about them,” Percy explains, in a slightly lower tone. “But, like, I just wanted to talk to you about what to do. You’re not the only one who was confused that day, you know.” He takes a short breath. “And it’s not like I would’ve done anything about it, I’m not that cheap. We might be soulmates, but I barely know you. What did you think I’d do? Get down on my knees and propose marriage? I just wanted to talk. I just wanted to ask you what you wanted to do from here on out, because I didn’t have any real ideas, and I thought maybe being friends, or acknowledging each other’s presence, at the very least, would be a step in the right direction.”

When she doesn’t reply, Percy swallows uncomfortably. “So, ummm. Uh. That’s pretty much all I had to say. So. Like. If you don’t want anything to do with me, that’s fine by me. I just…wanted to hear it from you, I guess. And I didn’t expect it to get dragged out for so long.”

They stand there for a good five minutes.

“You’re probably late for your thing,” Percy says, because apparently his mouth is an entity completely independent of the rest of his body and does whatever the fuck it wants to.

She doesn’t respond, doesn’t even move.

“Well, then.” He lets out a sigh. “Bye.” He turns on his heel and walks away, feeling several hundred tons lighter, but also the slightest bit disappointed.

**/**

**piper [10:10pm]:** holy shit what’d you say to her

 **piper [10:10pm]:** I haven’t seen annabeth this disappointed in herself since she got an A- in world lit lmaooo

In the days that follow, Percy attempts to go about his daily life like nothing’s happened.

Read: _attempts._

On the bright side, some of his rant had definitely stuck in Annabeth’s head: at least she longer attempts to flee the room when he’s in it, and she’s made eye contact with him more than once, but…it’s so awkward. Percy hadn’t expected this: he’d kind of sort of maybe hoped that Annabeth would apologize once she heard what he had to say and they’d settle into a tentative friendship. Maybe it was the yelling that had scared her off.

He feels a little guilty about that. Just a little. He hadn’t really meant to go off on her the way he had, it’s just that he’d been feeling frustration for quite a while, and it all came gushing out at once. Note to self: do not bottle up your feelings.

He remembers how her head had been bowed the entire time. He hopes he didn’t make her cry.

Piper seemed a little scared of him when he explained what happened. Jason patted his back and said he was proud of Percy for standing up for his rights. Percy told him to roll off a cliff.

He’s still not sure that what he did was the right thing. He doesn’t regret the things he said — what he regrets is how he said it. Percy’s not an angry person, though he might have really come off as one to her. He’s just the kind of person that feels a lot of feelings, and whenhe tries to hide it, well, that happens.

He’s disappointed, though. Because, despite all the stuff he’d said about not caring, Percy does care. He’d liked to have been on good terms with his soulmate.

He’s just going to have to get accustomed to the idea that he’s always going to have a slightly strained relationship with her. It’s okay. It’s fine. Percy can deal with that. He can deal with seeing her around the neighbourhood, nodding in greeting, and then going his own way. It’s okay if that’s as far as their relationship is ever going to go.

Which is why one day, when Percy’s in Café Jupiter on a lazy afternoon, surrounded by papers and losing his mind over the sheer amount of work he’s left until the last minute, he’s surprised when someone sets two steaming cups of cocoa on the table.

He looks up. It’s Annabeth, wearing a light blue beanie and a matching sweater that hides her tattoo. Her blonde hair looks nice in the sunlight. She isn’t smiling, but her face is the most relaxed he’s ever seen it, at least when directed at him.

“Can I sit down?” she asks.

Percy’s feeling prickly with all his pending work and the steady gaze she’s sending him, grumbles, “There are plenty of free seats around.” And there are. One quick glance around the café tells him he’s right: there are over a dozen free tables.

“I’d like to sit here,” she says calmly, “if that’s okay with you.”

He shrugs, and so Annabeth slides into the seat across from him. Her blonde hair looks like sunlight. He doesn’t look at it.

Wordlessly, she passes him the other cup of cocoa, which he accepts with a grunt, refusing to look up from his assignment sheets. He writes down a sentence, then strikes it off. He can’t concentrate. What is she doing here? He’s just beginning to move on; what the hell is she trying to pull?

“You’re ignoring me,” she says suddenly.

“Not entirely,” he responds.

She lets out a breath that sounds like half a laugh. “I guess I deserve that.”

Finally, he looks up, placing the pen carefully on the tabletop. She looks a little heartened as he does so, like she’s glad to have his undivided attention.

When she sees that he’s not about to say anything, she hurries on in a rush: “I’m sorry. All the things you said the other day…you were right. I didn’t mean to be such a bitch about it, I just handle all my problems by, well, just avoiding them, and I guess that wasn’t the best idea when my problem, was, in fact, a person.”

Percy raises an eyebrow. “I’m a problem?”

“You know what I mean.”

He looks at her. She doesn’t seem nervous at all, as he had been on the day he’d confronted her. She looks strong and sure and very much like the girl she’d been on the first day she’d met them. He supposes she’d always been the same person, just not with him.

“I get it,” he agrees.

“It was wrong of me to avoid you like that, even after you started making deliberate attempts to talk,” she continues. “And Piper kept telling me that I was being a dick about it, I just…” She takes a slow, steadying breath. “Facing things, or people, or a situation, that can cause me emotional pain…it’s hard for me. I just, kind of, like, don’t like facing problems that I thought I’d dealt with — like, I told myself I was done with soulmates when my dad died.”

“Piper —”

“Piper told me she told you guys,” she interrupts. “It’s fine.”

“I’m sorry.”

She laces her fingers together, then releases them. “I know it’s no excuse for how I acted but I just wanted you to know that...that I was just trying to get out of that headspace, because that was a really tough time for me, and I didn’t even want to think of soulmates.” She smiles a little at him. “I thought you’d give up if I ignored you for a while. I never thought that maybe you needed some closure, too. And I’m sorry.”

He’s a little surprised by her speech because of how genuine it is. There’s none of the overdramatic expressions or elaborate words when she makes her apology, and she speaks with a kind of disarming bluntness that is hard to dislike. She’s looking him right in the eye. Percy somehow gets the feeling that Annabeth probably does everything she does with the utmost of sincerity and straightforwardness, and he can respect that.

It’s partly because of that that he waves his hand casually and says, “It’s no problem.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean. I kind of blew my top. You didn’t deserve that either. We’re even now.” He finally takes a sip of the cocoa and finds that it’s perfect, even if it’s a little cooler than before. Annabeth takes this to mean that he’s cool with her now and smiles a little brighter. The smile looks good on her, and he thinks he’d like to see it again.

“I can’t lie, though,” she says. “I don’t really trust in the whole soulmates thing. Like, at all.”

“That’s fine by me,” he says. “I’m not really ready for…anything, really, either.”

“So…yeah.”

“Yeah.” He glances quickly at his phone and gathers up his sheets. “I’ve got to submit these now, but maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah, for sure, definitely,” she says quickly. “I’m glad I got to talk to you.”

“Me too.” He smiles, waves as best he can with all the papers in his arms, and then turns to leave. Julia smiles at him and winks as he approaches the front door, and then he hears Annabeth call him name.

He turns. “Yeah?”

She looks oddly nervous now. “And, like, I’m open to what you said earlier. About us being friends. A step in the right direction, you know.”

He can’t stop himself smiling, and even though he tries to tone it down a little, he can tell she can see. “I’d like that.”

“Nice,” she grins. “Me too.”

**/**

It doesn’t happen at once, of course. Most friendships take time, and that’s definitely the case with his and Annabeth’s. It starts with semi-awkward hellos when they cross paths, and then blossoms into smaller conversations, Good mornings and Hellos that turn into Jesus fuck, Percy, who let you out of the house looking like that, and I don’t know, Annabeth, maybe the same person who told you those ugly-ass shorts looked good on you —

“Take that back,” Annabeth jeers. Her eyes are narrowed like an angry cat. Percy wants to throw a jug of water at her.

But yeah. It’s kind of nice.

Annabeth fits in well with their group of friends — a ragtag bunch of relatives (Tyson is Percy’s half-brother, and Thalia, Nico, and Jason are all technically Percy’s second/third cousins, he’s not really sure), and old friends from middle school (Grover and Jason), and high school (Frank, Leo, and Piper), and literally random people that Percy’s met at parties, friends of friends that he just got along with too well to let go (Reyna and Rachel), and a whole host of significant others (Will, Juniper, Hazel, Ella, and Calypso). It’s a little weird at first, but then they all meet up at Percy’s place for a movie and food, and everyone begins to argue about which movie to watch, and Annabeth’s impressive argument about why they should watch the first Pokemon movie, of all things, cemented her place as a member of their group. Percy was just plain amazed at how she should spout the bullshit she was saying with such a persuasive tone.

(They ended up watching the movie, too. Almost everyone was in tears.)

After that, he sees her at the gym with Thalia, studying with Reyna, talking architecture with Leo. Tyson, in particular, adores her, and always asks about her whenever he’s over to visit. Annabeth sometimes stops by to leave a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (the only thing she can make, honestly) for him whenever he’s around. Percy’s happy for her. He can tell that she’d been worried about not finding friends in the place, and now she’s got, well, like, fifteen of them.

Everyone knows about the soulmate thing, of course. First of all, the tattoo isn’t something he can hide all the time, and someone would have put two and two together soon enough, and secondly, well, they’re all family to him, and he wants to tell them. There had been mixed reactions about the whole thing, but it’s hard to hate Annabeth, and, in the end, everything’s worked out well, so he can’t complain.

There’s also the fact that despite the initial unease, Percy and Annabeth have begun to get along really, really well. It’s like, at the point where she’s entering the apartment at the oddest times, sometimes when he’s not even home (it’s a well-known secret among Percy’s friends that he keeps his spare key under the loose tiles at his front doorstep). Once, thoroughly exhausted from college, Percy had returned to his apartment to find Annabeth on his couch, sipping a glass of sparkling water. She’d lifted the glass and said, “Hey.”

Leave, Percy had said.

She’s a shit cook. Like, a shit cook. Annabeth can make cheese sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and, like, instant ramen. That’s it.

Percy can make cheese sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, instant ramen, real ramen, chocolate chip cookies (but only if they’re blue), seven-layer dip (straight from his mom’s cookbook), pasta, apple tarts, lemon tarts, almost any flavour of sponge cake, and a mean chocolate fudge. He doesn’t like to brag, but Percy’s chocolate fudge is the best goddamn edible item to grace the goddamn planet. Percy could stop wars with his fudge. He could win a Nobel Peace Prize for his fudge. Percy could win Masterchef literally by serving Gordon Ramsay a plate of his chocolate fudge.

So it’s natural that once Annabeth has a bite of his egg burrito one day, by chance, she cannot let the matter go.

“Teach me,” she begs.

Percy teaches her, because he knows Annabeth is a smart person and he figures she’ll pick it up quickly with a teacher as good as him (insert hairflip here). They had a weird trivia quiz one night when the power was down, and Annabeth knew most of the capital cities of the world and she could multiply large numbers on the fly and talk for hours on end about Ancient Greek architecture. But Annabeth is not suited to cook, and it’s only after she burns her fifth slice of French toast that she gives up and now just pops in at random times and raids Percy’s fridge. He’s kind of okay with it.

So it’s no surprise when one day he opens the door to his apartment and finds Jason, Piper, and Annabeth sitting around the tiny coffee table like a fucking family during Thanksgiving, dividing up the pasta he’d meant to have for dinner.

“The fuck,” he says, with no bite. “Please get out and leave me alone.” He puts down a bag of groceries and points accusingly at Jason. “You, fucker, you chose to leave. So leave.” Jason only shovels more food into his open mouth, not even looking up as he flips Percy off.

“We left you a plate,” Piper says. Percy grabs it, grumbling: his knees touch Annabeth’s as he sits and she smiles at him, which would be nice if she hadn’t stuffed her face with his dinner.

“Why’re you here, aside from the fact that you’re all lazy and hungry?” Percy asks, helping himself. “You look like a fucking chipmunk,” he tells Annabeth.

“Fockh you,” Annabeth says around a mouthful of pasta.

“You’re spraying on me. Please don’t spray on me.”

“We were discussing things,” Piper says.

“Things,” says Percy.

Annabeth swallows. “I have a problem.”

“Me too,” Percy says. “My problem is that you guys are here talking about your problems, and I’m sleepy and I wanna go to sleep.”

“I have actual problems,” Annabeth says.

“Why do you wanna go to sleep, it’s only 11PM,” Piper mocks.

“Because I’m tiiiiiired,” Percy whines.

“Nooooooooob,” Piper says.

“I’m homelessssss,” Annabeth mimics. Percy stares at her, and she flushes.

“What,” says Percy.

“I’m not _homeless_ ,” she explains. “There’s just been a small flooding in the apartment upstairs, and water’s been dripping through the ceiling and it’s really bad, and I just need a place to crash for a week. Or two. Okay, two and a half.”

“That’s why we came here,” Piper explains. “I wanted to ask you if your old apartment is still free.”

“Stella’s friend was using it until she went to university,” Percy says, “but I think my Paul’s renting it out to one of his colleagues now.”

“Stella?” Annabeth asks.

“My kid sister, Estelle,” Percy explains. “But Estelle is like an old lady name, so I decided when I was really young that I’d have my grandkids call her Great Auntie Estelle when we were old and wrinkled, and so I call her Stella now.” He catches sight of the amused look on Annabeth’s face. “Aaand you didn’t wanna know any of that, did you. Stella’s my little sister and she’s studying aviation at Purdue. That’s it.”

“Nice.” Annabeth nods approvingly. “Guess she’s aiming _high_.”

Percy points a forkful of pasta at her. “One more pun and I won’t offer my help.”

“How was that helpful?” Piper demands. “We’re just back to square one.”

“What about Reyna?”

“Her sister’s staying over. Remember Hylla?”

“Her friend Kinzie hit on _all_ of us, how could I forget? Um, how about Rachel?”

“Living with a bunch of artist friends.” Piper glares at Annabeth. “I’d offer my place, but Annabeth doesn’t wanna live with a ‘couple’,” Piper does the little air quotations, “because of some stupid reason —”

“I need quiet, I don’t wanna be drawing up some plans and have to hear you rolling around in your beds at night doing god knows what,” Annabeth defends.

“I get that,” Percy shrugs.

“You’re being unreasonable,” Piper grumps. “That rules out, like, half our friends.”

They’re all quiet for a while, listening to the sound of Jason chewing. Then Percy says, “You could stay here.”

They both look at him.

“Yeah!” Piper crows, at the same time Annabeth goes, “What—”

“You could stay here,” Percy repeats. His chest is clenching painfully and he somehow doesn’t want her to refuse. “I mean, I’m single, so no sex shenanigans, I’m barely here during the day, I’m generally quiet, I cook, and also I need a roommate to share my rent costs for a month.”

“There’s the ulterior motive,” Jason snorts.

Annabeth, though, looks like she’s seriously considering the offer. She glances at Piper, who shrugs at her, cool as a cucumber, but then fixes Percy with a look that conveys both uncertainty and also _Oh my god all my dreams are coming true._

“It’s definitely a thought,” Annabeth admits, after a long moment of thought. She fixes Percy with a gaze full of gratitude. “Thanks for offering.”

“Just trying to be nice.” He directs this mostly at Piper, who lifts her eyebrows in a _Who_ _are you kidding?_ kind of way. Percy scratches his nose with his middle finger and hopes she gets the message; she does, and returns the gesture just as subtly.

They make a little bit more small talk until Percy finally loses his patience and kicks them out. Jason lingers in the doorway for a minute after the two girls have left.

“You sure about this?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Percy answers. “Yeah, I’ve got this.”

**/**

Being flatmates with a girl is…something.

There are several round rules that he’s just unconsciously aware of. He can’t walk around shirtless, can’t take his time in the bathroom, can’t blast loud music at midnight just because. He also has to get used to making meals for two people, finding drawing pencils between the cushions on the sofa, and waking up to Annabeth burning something in the kitchen every. Single. Morning.

Aside from that, it’s okay. It’s actually kind of fun.

He learns stuff about her. Not just the obvious stuff, like her passion for architecture, which is her major in university, and her preference of butterscotch over chocolate. He learns that she’s an early morning person, that she’s got a weakness for reality TV, that she used to read a lot as a kid and can quote Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy at will. She talks a lot about the architecture of ancient civilizations — her dad had been a History professor and had brought her to his lectures on several occasions — and once she starts, she won’t stop unless told to. And Percy, though he doesn’t share her enthusiasm for the subject, finds himself resting his chin on his hands, listening to her speak and nodding along. It’s not only because Ananbeth smiles more when she talks about ancient buildings, but also because he likes watching people who are so in love with what they do.

As he’d suspected earlier, they’re good together. Not like _together_ together, but as friends, as a team. It’s surprisingly easy to get used to Annabeth, who’s generally quiet and almost unbelievably clean. He has the sneaking suspicion that some of her habits arerubbing off on him: he’s begun to take the stairs instead of the elevator, clean up after he finishes cooking, and making his bed when he wakes up. They still argue, of course, about who keeps finishing the orange juice and G _oddamn it, Seaweed Brain, I have to go to class so can you please get out of the fucking bathroom_ , but in time, they begin to argue less and banter more.

There are days, though, when Annabeth is just in a foul mood, refusing to eat much and downing painkillers like they’re candy. When he asks Piper about it, she laughs, and then looks at him with something like fondness.

“Oh, Perce,” she says, “she’s probably just on her period, that’s all.”

“Oh,” he says. “Ohhhh.”

“Yeah.” Piper looks like she’s trying very hard not to smile. “I think it’s best to just leave her alone.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Chocolate,” Piper says immediately. “Chocolate helps — Annabeth likes white chocolate best, in case you were wondering — and, uh, I dunno. Maybe soup? I always make Jason buy some soup when I’m on my period, because I always feel really cold and I need something warm.”

“Soup,” Percy says. “I can do that.”

So the next month, when he notices the telltale signs — Annabeth refusing breakfast and having two coffees instead, clenching her jaw and pressing her stomach repeatedly, and swallowing a few pills before leaving for her classes —Percy stops by at Ixcacao’s Chocolates and buys a large bar of white chocolate. Then he buys some some mushrooms, garlic, onions, and flour.

He’s an idiot, he thinks as he chops the onions, tears streaming down his face. He’s not even sure if Annabeth likes mushroom soup.

She walks in half an hour later, shivering from the cold and looking generally like she’s living the worst life she could possibly live. Percy knows from experience that she’ll just snap if he tries to act happy and ask her how her day was, so he just gestures to the soup and the chocolate and pats the empty space next to him on the couch.

She stares at the soup for a while, then pours herself a bowl and joins him. She sits cross-legged, sipping the soup and watching America’s Next Top Model, which Percy knows is her favourite guilty pleasure, and then nibbles on the chocolate for a while. Percy knows he’s done something right when he rises to clean the kitchen, and Annabeth offers to help him, breaks off a piece of chocolate and throws it at him, and then turns to him with a grateful smile.

By the time he’s done cleaning, he goes back to the couch to find Annabeth curled up in his blanket, fast asleep. She’s wearing a t-shirt, but her soulmate tattoo remains covered with a layer of makeup. He tries very hard not to feel hurt.

He wonders what to do now. He could leave her on the couch, of course, but sleeping on the couch, though a seemingly good idea at first, always ends up with Percy’s neck and back hurting like hell the next morning. He’s gonna have to take her to her room.

He’s wondering how to lift her when she stirs and then sits bolt upright. “Shit, what time is it?”

He checks. “Twelve fifteen.”

“Oh. Okay. Good.” She rises unsteadily and walks with Percy to their rooms; he switches off the lights when they get to the doorway.

“Night,” he says.

“Good night,” she responds.

He turns to enter the room, already yawning, when he hears Annabeth call out, “Percy.”

“Yeah?”

In the darkness, he can see only her hair, shining dim gold from the lights of the city beyond the window. Her eyes look like mercury, silver and gleaming. “Thank you for the chocolate. And the soup. I love mushrooms.”

“It’s no problem.”

“Just…thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”

He shrugs, unsure of what to do.

“Night, Perce,” she says quietly, shutting her door behind her, but he sees her smiling right before she’s out of sight, and the memory of it makes him warm even when he wakes up the next morning.

**/**

Percy’s, well…let’s just say he hadn’t grown up with a lot. He wasn’t the type to pester his mom for stuff he wanted, either, so it wasn’t a big surprise when Percy declared Christmas to be his favourite holiday of all time. Because, well, he got lots of cool stuff. And his mom would make batches of cookies that they’re share over some pasta, cake, and ice cream.

Things have, of course, changed over the years. Percy’s earliest Christmas memories are of just the two of them putting up decorations on the tree, making cookies (Percy mostly licked the batter from the bowl) and watching happy sappy movies. Then, of course, came Gabe, who’d come home drunk on Christmas morning and smashed all the presents to smithereens. There hadn’t been many good Christmases until his mother left Gabe and met Paul, who was really enthusiastic about Christmas and always spent extra time and money trying to make everything perfect. Then, after Stella was born, it was all of them celebrating together, hanging up lights and eating enough food to make their bellies bulge.

Percy loves Christmas.

He brings the topic up with Annabeth a few nights before Christmas Eve, when they’re both sitting idly in front of the TV. Or at least Percy’s idle: Annabeth’s got papers spread out on the floor and she’s trying to take measurements, muttering about wishing she had a drafting table.

“What are you doing for Christmas?” he asks.

“Dunno,” she answers absentmindedly, brushing the hair out of her eyes. “I was just planning on staying here.”

“What?” he asks, but then he regrets it immediately. Of course she’s got no choice but to stay here. Her dad is dead, she never mentions her mom, and she’d mentioned offhandedly before that her Bostonian cousin was travelling. And she’ll have barely any company, too— Piper and Jason are going to Los Angeles to visit Piper’s dad, and the rest are, well, all going home. He hadn’t really thought about what Annabeth was going to do.

“Come home with me,” he says at once.

“Percy, I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” he argues. “Mom would love to meet you, and Stella, too. We always cook much more than we can eat, and, um…I dunno. Nobody should be alone on Christmas.”

 And that’s how he and Annabeth end up standing in front of the Jackson-Blofis residence at dusk on Christmas Eve, heavily sweatered and carrying several stockings full of candy.

Percy bangs on the door with his fist, and Stella opens it immediately, almost like she’d been waiting. Percy’s _sure_ she’d been waiting: they hadn’t, after all, seen each other in nearly a year, but the expression on her face is more exasperated than happy.

“You’re late.” She swings the door fully open, considering him with a slight frown on her face.

“Move over, asshole,” Percy says.

“Language!” he hears his mother yelp from the kitchen. Stella completely disregards her.

“I wouldn’t have come if I knew you were coming,” she says with distaste, and then, focusing behind him, her entire face lights up. “Oh! You must be Annabeth!”

“Hi,” says Annabeth, looking slightly stricken by the sudden change in her behaviour.

“Lemme help you,” Stella says sweetly, grabbing all the candy from Annabeth’s hands and gesturing for her to come inside. Side-by-side, the two girls couldn’t look more different: Annabeth’s slightly taller and more muscular, while Stella looks more delicate with her petite frame. Stella doesn’t even look like Percy, who’s taken after his biological father: she looks a lot like Sally — brown eyes, milky skin, long dark hair — but her mannerisms are straight from Paul. Annabeth’s looking back and forth between them like she’s trying to spot the similarities.

His mother emerges from the kitchen, looking a little older than the last time he’d come over — there are a few more grey steaks in her hair, and more little wrinkles around her eyes when she smiles, but her hug feels the same and Percy allows his eyes to flutter shut when she leans towards him, arms open.

He finally backs away, still holding all the stockings, while Sally gives Annabeth a hug, too, saying things like _Oh, I’m so glad you could make it,_ and _Would you like to have a taste of my brownies? I need a taste tester and—_

“Stop staring.” Stella nudges him with her elbow. “C’mon, let’s put these up.”

“Wasn’t staring,” he grumbles, following her into the hallway, where Paul’s wrapped the fairy lights so many times that Percy can’t even see the damn plant.

“Where’s the tree, Paul?” he asks.

“Hiding, evidently.” Paul looks slightly ashamed of himself, even though this is the third year in a row that he’s done it.

Stella giggles, then dumps all her decorations into Percy’s arms, grabbing the step-stool and positioning it under a nail in the wall.

“You didn’t tell me your soulmate was so pretty,” she says conversationally.

Percy hands her a stocking. “Yeah, whatever.”

Stella snorts. “You were really staring at her back there."

“Was not.”

“Percy.” Stella gives him a look that screams _You’re not fooling anyone._ She grabs another stocking. “So, when are you gonna tell her?”

“Tell her what?”

“That you’re madly in love with her.”

Percy whacks the back of her knees with a large yellow star. “Drop dead. I’m not in love with her.”

"You are too, loverboy.”

"Loverboy, really?"

"Soulmate-boy?" Stella stops and strokes her imaginary beard. "Soulboy. Soulboy and Lovergirl, sequel to Sharkboy and Lavagirl. I'm a genius."

"You're a dumbass," says Percy.

“Well, _you’re_ a stupid idiot in love.”

“Well, you’re—”

“Stella, Percy,” their mom says, walking into the room with a tired expression on her face. Percy fervently hopes they hadn’t been loud enough for Annabeth to hear them.

Annabeth walks in behind her, looking starstruck. “Percy, your mom cooks like an actual angel.”

Sally looks like she’s blushing. “Oh, dear, please, it’s not that great.”

“No, Mrs.Blofis, I mean it. I thought Percy was a good cook, but—”

“I know, right?” Stella says in ecstasy. “He thought he was the hottest piece of shit the first time he baked a cookie without having it go up in flames—”

“Just because you both can’t many anything more complicated than a vegetable salad,” Percy shoots back.

Stella points a candy cane at him. “You take that back.”

Annabeth has the decency to like slightly ashamed. “I can also make fruit salad.”

“Leave,” says Percy.

“No, I like her, she’s staying,” says Stella, hopping off the stool and grabbing Annabeth’s arm, who, despite her attempts to appear uncaring, looks pleased at the attention.

“Stop arguing,” his mother groans, “this is the first time you’ve met in months, why are you wasting your time fighting—”

In the middle of all this, Paul switches on the Christmas tree lights, and the resultant blare is so strong that they all scream and avert their eyes.

“Dad!” Stella groans.

“Paul, I told you not to overdo it,” Sally says tiredly.

“I think it’s great, Mr. Blofis,” Annabeth says. She would be a lot more convincing if her back wasn’t to the tree.

“Stop lying, Annabeth,” Percy grunts. Then, to Paul—“Paul, I’m going blind.”

“I think it’s better than last year,” Paul says brightly.

Percy slams his hand to his forehead. “This is just about typical for us.” He explains to Annabeth, "Paul really doesn't understand the lights-to-tree ratio: we can only fit the smaller trees in here, but he always buys too many lights. This year is better, but—"

"Ah, I see," says Annabeth, which is funny because her eyes are clenched shut like she's in actual pain.

“Dad, switch off the lights!” Stella yells.

“If you look at them long enough, you’ll get used to it,” says Paul.

“Paul, off, _now,”_ Sally says.

Paul switches off the light. Stella immediately crumples to the floor, hands over her eyes and yelling “What is this darkness!” like the total drama queen she is. Paul blinks rapidly, then asks sheepishly to the room as a whole: “Can we cover it up with a tarp or something to dim it?” and Sally just shakes her head at them.

Annabeth finally turns back around, squinting, and steps next to Percy.

“This is nice,” she says.

“You’re kidding, right?” Percy gestures to Paul and his mom, throwing over a green tarpaulin over the Christmas tree, while Stella laughs at them from the floor. “This is a disaster.”

“Better than anything I ever had,” Annabeth murmurs. “My mom left, and then my dad was too sick to celebrate Christmas. After he died, I was moved around from one foster family to another, and I never really got to be a part of the celebrations there, either.” She glances at Percy, whose mouth is wide open: she’s never told him anything related to her family before. “This—” she gestures around the hall, at the wreaths of holly, glittering stars, lopsided stockings, and the now-covered tree. “This is better than everything I ever expected.”

To his shock, her eyes are wet. “Thank you so much for inviting me.”

He bumps her lightly with his shoulder, and then, on an impulse, gives her a half-hug. She doesn’t recoil as he’d expected, but merely looks up at him with a radiant smile on her face that makes his heart skip several beats.

If Percy were a smarter man, he would’ve figured out what was going to happen.

**/**

He’s not sure when it starts.

 It might’ve been that one time when they were watching the Lord of the Rings Extended version and she began to imitate Gimli the dwarf so accurately that he laughed so hard soda came out of his nose. It might’ve been that one time they were eating jellybeans and yelling the answers to quiz shows and she threw him only the blue jellybeans when he got the answer right because she knew he liked them best. Or maybe it was all the little moments, plus more, that suddenly made Percy realize he had fallen for Annabeth quite a while ago.

And it’s terrible how hard he’s pining: he’s like a shy middle schooler watching the cool popular girl from afar, admiring her, passing by her every day in the hallway but never plucking up the courage to ever say anything to her. It’s pathetic. He’s so pathetic.

It’s even worse because Annabeth doesn’t even have an inkling of how much he adores her. It’s not even a crush anymore. It’s at the point where Percy could watch her sneezing and think _aww, she’s so cute_. It’s like. Have you ever loved someone to the point where the most ordinary of their habits become adorable? It’s like that. Percy watches her and he thinks he loves the way she brushes her hair out of her eyes, he loves the way her eyes light up whenever they drive past the Empire State Building, he loves the way she drums her fingers on her knees, he loves the way she sips her fucking tea.

The cough begins later. It arrives as innocently and as predictably as any other cold he’s ever had in his life, but when Percy coughs, he feels like it goes deeper than a normal one, but he gets Annabeth to make him some extra-spicy soup for the next few days and figures it’ll pass.

Only it doesn’t. The cough starts in April, continues till July, and by the time it’s Annabeth’s birthday, it feels like Percy’s brain is rattling every time he coughs. Piper and Annabeth tell him to visit a doctor: Percy tells them that no, he doesn’t want to waste any money, and that he’ll go to his mom or something. Just his mom’s presence could probably cure most diseases, he says. Mama’s boy, Annabeth sniggers.

“The only disease around here,” Percy snarks, “is your bad attitude.”

Annabeth pouts in a very Aww, don’t be mean to the birthday girl way and even though the pout is really ugly and exaggerated Percy’s heart still does some weird somersault and it’s only halfheartedly that he flips her off and walks away.

The party dies down a little after midnight and Percy cleans up the living room in silence while Annabeth sits on the sofa, surrounded by her presents. He can tell, without even looking up, whether or not she likes a certain present just by the way she grunts or sighs. Piper’s gift, a sleek silver necklace with a delicate owl-shaped pendant, gets a small hmph of happiness, while other gifts, generic things like books or CDs, get small sniffs of disappointment.

When she’s all done, she turns to Percy expectantly.

“I didn’t get you anything,” Percy grumbles. “Me letting you live here is a gift enough.”

“Oh,” she says, and her expression deflates into something so morose that Percy can’t keep up the act much longer. He relents, “Okay, it’s in your room.”

“Oooooh,” Annabeth gasps, and runs to her room; Percy follows her slowly, finally stopping to rest sideways against the doorway. He watches her look around, confused, for a minute, before gasping dramatically, covering her mouth with both hands.

“Oh,” she says, “oh, it’s beautiful, Perce.”

Her hand lightly skims the surface of the new drafting table as though afraid to break it, eyes wide and breaths stilled. She looks up at him with a look of wonder. “Where did you get this?”

“Um, well,” he says sheepishly, “I made it.”

“You what?” And she sounds so horrified that he takes a defensive step backward: “Well, Leo helped with the overall design, obviously. I knew you wanted a new one, you kept complaining that your old one was too small and there wasn’t any room for your pencils and other stationery, and you couldn’t afford a new one, so the other day when I was in shop class I was like why not, and then, well, that.” He gestures bleakly at the table. “I dunno.” He shrugs. “Do you like it?”

And then she is running at him, reaching him in a few steps and throwing her arms around him. Percy counts silently to five — Annabeth’s hugs never last longer than five seconds, and counting down the time spent with her in his arms seems to make the time pass slower helps, he thinks — but when she doesn’t move away, even after a record fifteen seconds, Percy realizes he’s just standing there like a total dumbass statue and hugs her back.

“Practical _and_ beautiful,” she sniffs. “It’s the best birthday present ever, Percy. Thank you.”

“Hey.” His voice comes out all shaky, because oh my _god_ her breath is tickling his neck and it’s the best feeling ever and his entire body is erupting in goosebumps at her proximity, “Hey, no problem.”

She steps away, her nose kind of red and shiny (Rudolph, he coughs, and she slaps his arm) and smiles up radiantly at him. “You deserve a treat. I’ll cut you some extra cake, wait here.”

“I’ll get the forks,” he says.

Annabeth bustles off, blonde hair bouncing with every step she takes, and Percy smiles as she leaves. I love her, he thinks giddily, I love her, but then the smile vanishes as suddenly as it appears when he thinks, she doesn’t love me back.

Another cough rises from deep inside his chest out of nowhere and comes out so splutteringly violently that it makes him double over: dimly, he hears Annabeth ask him if he needs some water, and he’s trying to retch out an affirmative in reply when something small and yellow twirls out of his mouth and towards the ground. As soon as it is released, Percy’s coughs stop, and he’s left there in shock, watching the little something drift lazily to the floor.

It is a petal, he sees, bending down to inspect it. He picks it up. It is small, graceful, delicate, the exact same shade of Annabeth’s eyes, the way they look in the sunlight. Not the thundercloud grey, but a softer shade, nearly purple.

Oh, he thinks, this can’t be good.

**/**

■ **Hanahaki Disease**  ( _花吐き病_  (Japanese)) [pronounced _ha-nah-hah-key_ ] is an extremely rare disease where the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. It can be cured only if the victim’s feelings are returned or through surgical removal, but when the infection is removed, the victim's romantic feelings for their love also disappear with little to no chance of return.

The first thing Percy thinks is that he’s going to die.

He takes the news that he’s suffering from a possibly-fatal disease fairly calmly, despite the fact that he’d typed _I COUGEHD OUT A FLOWET PETAL WHAT IS HAPPENING_ at the speed of light and with shaking fingers.

 **Do you mean:** _I COUGHED OUT A FLOWER PETAL WHAT IS HAPPENING —_

The first link had said _Hanahaki disease, causes, effects, and symptoms;_ Percy had clicked it, read the description, read the origin, the symptoms. He’d read survivor’s accounts, and he’d read about the mortality rate. He’s been reading for hours about the disease that could potentially take his life, all while keeping a straight face: after all, Annabeth is sitting not too far away, feet propped up in his lap, reading a book.

Here is what Percy has learned about Hanahaki so far:

  1. Hanahaki (the word) has its origin in Japanese: hana means flower and haki apparently comes from hakimasu, which means to throw up. The disease had originated in Japan in 1809 and had spread to the rest of the world, but the disease was extremely rare in modern times, with as few as a mere 12 cases recorded worldwide in the year 2015.
  2. The flowers bloom inside the victim’s lung, eventually puncturing the organ entirely. The process is slow, which is why the affected may cough up only a single petal at first, but the number of petals eventually increases as the flower and the severity of the disease grows further. If the disease progresses to a late enough stage, the patient may end up coughing up a whole flower.
  3. The flower itself usually has a special significance to the victim. Flower petals are usually the patient’s loved one’s eye color, hair color, favourite color, et cetera. Patients have been reported to cough up scarlet rose petals (the thorns must’ve really hurt), bluebells, and, once, even a whole hibiscus.
  4. There are a grand total of two ways to cure the disease. The first method is through surgery: as with most medical procedures, the process has less risk if tackled early. The downside to the surgery is that once the flower is removed from the lungs, so are the person’s feelings towards the one they love. Most people opt out of surgery for the simple reason that they’d rather live with the pain of loving someone who doesn’t feel the same way about them rather than forget altogether. Doctors once said that patients showing early signs of the disease almost always regained their lost memories after surgery, but the theory was disproved in 1857. Most people who choose to have the surgery emerge after the operation perfectly functional once more, but less than 10 per cent ever regain their memories. An account written by the sister of a Hanahaki survivor said that she watched her brother live a long life after his surgery, but he often confessed to her that he felt as though he was living with a hole in his heart — a hole left blank by a person he had forgotten. Stories like these have people confused as to whether leading a half-life post-surgery is really worth it.
  5. The other method to cure Hanahaki is completely and utterly nonsensical in theory and must have baffled scientists until proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true. The disease can also be cured if the unrequited love suffered is returned: the catch is that the victim must believe it. The victim has to really, truly believe that their love is being reciprocated, or else the flowers will not wither. Tales of survivors in this case are hopeful, encouraging, but, well, the fact of the matter remains that the odds of the person loving you back aren’t that great. Less than 0.02%, apparently. Death might be kinder.
  6. Hanahaki results in death. There’s no sugarcoating it: if the disease is not cured in time, the affected will die. The growing flowers will eventually clog up the respiratory system and the windpipe, leading to eventual death due to lack of air. Love really does kill you from the inside.



 Here are the observations Percy has made and the conclusions he’s drawn in the few hours since he coughed up his first petal:

  1. The petal is a striking bluish-purple color that is most likely from a forget-me-not. They’re supposed to symbolize faithful love and memories, which is ironic is a way that only Percy’s life has managed to be.
  2. This is his first petal, so at the very least he’s caught the disease early. If he consulted a doctor, he would probably be told to get the surgery done at once, rip the flower out while it’s still young. This is…a thought. It’s a thought.
  3. The disease is probably only going to get worse from here on out, and Percy is, for the first time in a long time, absolutely goddamn terrified.



So, in short, Percy has four options from here:

  1. Squash his feelings. Oppress them, push them down until they scarcely exist anymore, bury them in the darkest part of him and refuse to acknowledge them even to himself. He could kick Annabeth out of his apartment, ignore her for the rest of his life, and hopefully the flower would have vanished by then. This method had been suggested in a couple of comments he’d browsed through and he isn’t entirely sure it’ll work, but it’s his last option, probably. He could never cut Annabeth out of his life like that: she’s too good a friend to him and he’d never be such a dick, even if he wasn’t totally in love with her.
  2. Go for the surgery. This, again, he’s kind of sceptical about, because Percy and his family don’t nearly have enough money to pay for an operation this expensive, and plus, well. He doesn’t want to forget Annabeth. Despite the fact that loving his soulmate is, well, killing him, they get along really great together and he loves spending time with her. They match each other’s dry remarks marvellously and have the same twisted sense of humor. They’ve had some really good times together, and he’s not ready to give that up.
  3. Make her fall for him. Flirt with her, seduce her, woo her, walk around naked in the apartment whilst flexing his biceps. Buy her flowers or chocolate or architecture books and be so sickly sweet until she has no choice but to fall for him. This seems like a decent enough idea until Percy remembers that he’s a terrible flirt, he stumbles in his speech whenever he attempts a pick-up line, he’s probably get crushed under one of those books, and Annabeth’d just be weirded out by his behaviour. He’d probably end up pushing her away if he so much as tried to buy her flowers, but it would always be fun to try. Maybe when he’s got nothing to lose.
  4. Stick to the status quo. Keep this from everyone: Jason, Piper, Grover, his parents, especially Annabeth, which might be hard since they’re living together, damn it. He’ll go about his daily life, coughing up petals once in a while as a reminder that he’s rotting from the inside, and hope that one day Annabeth will fall for something good in him, but not force anything to happen, either. Thing is, though, if she doesn’t fall in love with him…he might die. He might actually die.



Knitting his brows together, Percy shifts slightly in his seat so as not to disturb Annabeth, but she doesn’t seem too bothered. He closes his eyes, leans his head backward, and makes his decision.

Here is what Percy is going to do.

  1. He is going to wait. He is, quite possibly, going to die.



**/**

Living with the knowledge that he might die is, um, quite the experience.

It’s almost surreal. Percy knows what might happen, but he thought he’d panic more in the face of death. Instead, he’s calm to almost an eerie degree, continuing to banter with Annabeth like nothing’s changed.

Which is one thing he’s determined to do: act like nothing’s changed. He’s got Hanahaki and any sane person in his situation would probably start figuring out what to do next. Percy’s big plan is to do nothing, which is pretty much typical of him, but he’s sure that he wants Annabeth to fall for him organically, the old-fashioned way, if at all.

Ain’t he a fucking gentleman.

He coughs up another petal the next morning while he’s brushing his teeth, and then another when he sees Annabeth serves him burnt toast with a sheepish smile. He’s not sure how this works. Will he cough up more petals if he sees her more?

He soon discovers that this theory is, in fact, false as fuck, since he coughs up another three petals after class. The feeling is annoying: it’s like when you have to puke really bad, but you can’t swallow it down again. And then you retch, but instead of vomit, you only throw up flower petals.

It’s weird, for sure.

The petals are coming out one at a time. He figures this is a good thing, because it seems like he’s in only in the beginning stages of the disease, and so that gives him time.

The next order of business is who to tell.

He isn’t telling Annabeth, of course. Out of the question. And so he rules out Grover, who’ll tell him to tell Annabeth, Piper, who’ll just go and tell Annabeth, Jason, who’ll tell Piper, Leo, who’ll tell Jason, Cal and Hazel, who’ll tell Leo, Frank and Nico, who’ll tell Hazel, Will and Reyna, who’ll tell Nico, and Rachel, who’ll stand up and yell it in the middle of the goddamn street.

So basically, he can’t tell anyone.

He debates for two seconds about telling his mom, but then decides against that, too. He doesn’t want to worry her: god knows he’s done enough of that as a child. 

So Percy is alone in this. Okay. Okay. He can deal with that.

It doesn’t help that with each passing day, it only seems like he’s falling for Annabeth more and more. God that sound cliché, but he can’t help it. He finds himself staring at her, like, all the time, even when they’re with friends. Jason had spotted him a couple of times and had raised an eyebrow, but thankfully he hadn’t said anything.

Anyway, it’s not like Percy can stop at this point.

The little things about her seem to stick out more to him now. How the ends of her hair curl up. How she’s got a few freckles near her nose than nobody can see. How she’s got a birthmark on her wrist that she covers up with a watch. How she smiles, slowly at first, and then completely, lips spread wide with just a hint of teeth showing.

Wow, he really is pathetic.

And the thing is, even though he has Hanahaki, even though he knows she doesn’t believe in soulmates, Percy still hopes. He’s such a fucking idiot for hoping, but he can’t help it. Every time she smiles at him, or touches his arm, or does something nice for him, he thinks Oh my god it’s happening but then he coughs up another petal and it’s back to square one.

It hurts. It hurts when he sees her cover up her soulmark under her clothes or makeup. He’s been flaunting his for a while now, and sometimes he just wants to grab her and shake her and yell, _We’re perfect for each other! Why can’t you see it?_

He can’t stop thinking about it. He can’t stop thinking about what they might be like together. He imagines coming home and Annabeth giving him a swift kiss on the lips, imagines her resting her chin on his shoulder while he cooks, imagines them sleeping in the same bed at night. And no, they’re not even the dirty kind of fantasies. He just. He wants to hold her. That’s all, okay? He wants to be allowed to love her, and he wants to be able to show it, and he wants her to love him too.

But of course his life sucks and his luck sucks even worse, so Percy wakes up every day pining more and more, coughing up flowers into the sink every morning.

It’s getting worse.

He can feel it, even if the amount of flower petals didn’t increase every time. Every time he coughs, it’s like he can feel his entire skeleton rattle. He quits the swim team for a while since he literally can’t breathe anymore. The flowers come out of his mouth more often than not lately, and he ends up having to conceal the petals in his fist.

It’s December before he knows it, and nothing much has changed between them. On the outside, of course. Inside he’s a blithering mess, his entire body seemingly lighting up at her touch, when she directs a smile at him.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and everyone’s already lolling around different parts of the house. Most are gathered around the TV, yelling at each other for the remote and requesting channels. Percy’s obviously on food duty, where he’s taking batch after batch of fudge out of the oven. Grover is next to him, telling him about the various go-green initiatives he and Juniper have been taking part in lately. Annabeth sits not too far away with Reyna, nodding about something.

Grover follows his gaze. “She hasn’t said anything about, well, your situation?”

That’s what everyone’s been calling it: _your situation._ Or they just point at the tattoo and raise their eyebrows, like Percy’s supposed to just understand what they mean. Percy gets the feeling that they’re all dying to know more, and, since Annabeth always gets all prickly when asked about it, Percy’s their only source of information. They all probably talk about it all the time when Percy and Annabeth aren’t around.

“Dunno. We’re fine.” Percy notices that Annabeth’s covered her tattoo with makeup. He’s trying to learn not to care.

Grover is watching him carefully. “You’re fine?”

Percy swallows a lump in his throat that might just be another petal. He looks into his best friend’s eyes and he suddenly wants to spill it all: how he feels about Annabeth, how he wants them to be soulmates and live happily ever after and that whole thing, and how he’s coughing up forget-me-nots like it’s a fucking omen and he’s more scared than he’s ever been in his entire life.

Percy places a tray of fudge on the counter: as if lured by the smell, Leo, Frank, and Calypso all drift over like zombies.

“Marry me,” Leo groans, looking down at the chocolate. He digs his spoon into the tray. “Fuck me. Fuck. This is better than sex.”

“I know,” Calypso moans from next to him.

They both stare at each other for a few seconds, and then just keep eating.

Percy snorts, and then looks at Grover.

“I’m fine,” he lies.

Grover places a hand on his shoulder. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Percy says, with what he knows is enough conviction to please his best friend.

“You can always talk to me, you know,” Grover says encouragingly, “about anything. And you should just spit it out to Annabeth. She’s a big girl, she can take it.”

“Yeah,” Percy says, “maybe I will.”

It’s nearly midnight; the crowd at the TV has started the countdown, raising drinks and slices of pizza (and, in Leo’s case, a spoonful of fudge) into the air as they yell out: “Fifteen! Fourteen! Thirteen—”

Grover joins Juniper, and Percy walks up between Annabeth and Rachel. Piper’s leading the chorus of “EIGHT! SEVEN! SIX! FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!”

“Happy New Year!” everyone crows, hugging, kissing, slamming their glasses of drink together.

Percy looks at Annabeth for a split second, hoping, but she’s turned towards Piper and Jason, hugging them each in turn. Shrugging, Percy gives Rachel a swift kiss that means nothing; when he turns back around, Annabeth has vanished from sight.

The party winds down about two hours later: everyone staggers off home and Annabeth and Percy are left alone.

“Happy New Year,” she says finally, giving him a quick hug. She’s smiling. “Any resolutions this year?”

“A couple that I definitely won’t keep,” he says, and she laughs. She’s already stepped back from the hug and Percy’s body is aching for her to come back. He has to actually shove his hands into his pockets because he’s scared he’ll pull her back into his arms or something creepy like that.

Grover’s advice rings in his head until he can’t stand it anymore and starts, “Hey, so.”

She’s slurping leftover ramen and stops midway so that the noodles still hang out of her mouth. It shouldn’t be cute.

“Mmmpgh,” she says.

Now or never.

“You’re still covering up your soulmate tattoo.”

She swallows the noodles. “Yeah.” At once, she sounds uncertain, defensive. Percy regrets asking her.

“I’m guessing you haven’t changed your mind,” he says quietly.

She can’t meet his eyes. “Percy, I—”

Just the tone of her voice is enough for him to understand. “Nah, it’s okay. I was just curious.”

“Percy,” she asks quietly, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says. He grabs some ramen. Annabeth is coughing next to him, so he gets her some water. His ears are ringing. His brain feels numb.

That night, as he’s brushing his teeth, he bends over and coughs up an entire flower for the very first time. He stares at the thing, revolted, even though it is actually quite beautiful. Small and blue, he could hold about thirty of them in the palm of his hand.

It is the first day of the new year, and he’s already running out of time.

**/**

It gets awkward after that.

He doesn’t want it to be. He wants everything to go back to normal, but ever since he’d asked the soulmate question that night, something’s shifted between them. It’s slight: they still talk like normal, but it’s lost the playfulness and the fun. Now it’s more strained, like they’re forcing everything to be normal when it’s really, really not.

Percy’s afraid he’s ruined everything.

And he doesn’t need any more stress, okay? He’s been coughing whole flowers instead of single petals ever since that day, and he’s grown weaker, to the point where it takes actual effort to get out of bed each morning. He looks at himself in the mirror now: there are dark rings under his eyes, and his skin looks pale and lifeless. He’s been telling everyone that he’s not been getting enough sleep lately, but he can’t keep using that lie forever.

He coughs up another flower, gazes at it in disgust as he rips it apart, petal by petal, and flushes it down the toilet. He can’t look at it anymore. It disgusts him and he hates looking at the damn things because it reminds him just how weak he is.

He wants to tell Annabeth he loves her. He wants to, but will that change anything? He doesn’t want her to say it back out of pity, or anything.

Because the fact remains that Annabeth isn’t in love with him: she hasn’t shown a single sign of wanting anything more than what they have right now. She doesn’t care about soulmates and she hasn’t budged from her views since day one. It’s fine. That’s what she thinks. He can respect that.

She’s coughing, now, as he enters the hallway, and she tries to stifle it when she sees him approach. Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Percy somehow feels responsible.

They make small talk as the sun gets brighter: Percy makes Annabeth a hot chocolate, even adding in a few extra marshmallows he knows she’s too proud to ask for. Annabeth notices, and something in her expression changes slightly.

This is what he means. Something’s different. It’s something small, probably something stupid, but Percy’s overactive mind can’t stop thinking about it.

She leaves soon after for her class; Percy acts like he’s going to leave soon, too, but when she closes the door behind her, he collapses onto the sofa, pulls a blanket around himself, and shivers until he falls asleep.

He wakes up to his phone vibrating.

 **annabeth [4.40pm]:** I’m at the store do you need anything?

 **percy [4.42pm]:** no but get some cough drops for yourself lol

 **annabeth [4.45pm]:** lmao you noticed?

Of course he noticed. He notices everything about her. Which makes him kind of a stalker, ugh.

 **percy [4.45pm]:** first thing I heard this morning lol

 **annabeth [4.46pm]:** oh shit sorry

Annabeth comes home, still coughing and refusing to meet his eyes.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she says in a low tone. She sets down her bag, fiddles around with her hands for a while, and then lets out in a rush, “My mom asked me to live with her today.”

“Your mom?” Percy stares at her. He knows nothing about Annabeth’s mom other than the fact that she left when Annabeth was a little girl, and Percy’s dad got the Hanahaki because of her. He doubts Annabeth knows much more, either.

“She contacted me the other day.” Annabeth sits down opposite him, grey eyes clouded over. She still isn’t looking at him. “She got my number through that architecture firm I’m doing the internship with. She-she’s an architect too.”

“Okay,” says Percy carefully. “When was this?”

Annabeth looks at his hands. “A week and a half ago, I guess.”

Oh, he thinks. That would have been around the time he asked her the Soulmate Question. In other words, she’d had this on her mind already when he’d decided to bombard her with even more stuff. He feels like a tool.

“She just asked to see me,” Annabeth continues. “I refused at first, but she was so insistent, she kept calling, and she sounded really genuine.”

“Did you meet her?” Percy asks.

“Today.”

“And?”

“She…” Annabeth looks at him, then away, very quickly. “She asked me to come live with her for a while.”

His heart just about stops. “Oh.”

“I told her I’d think about it, but she kept saying that it’d be only for a month. She just wants to talk. She even offered an internship at her firm.” She coughs into her fist. “It’s one of the biggest in New York.”

He knows what’s coming. “So you said yes.”

She hesitates. “Yes.”

He feels anger rise up in him. Anger and hurt like a blue flame, licking at his insides. “And when were you planning on telling me about all this?”

“She literally told me half an hour ago—”

“You know what I mean.”

Annabeth at least looks guilty. “I-I meant to, but—”

“But what?” he asks. He feels a cough coming up and pushes it back down with a sip of water. “I deserve better than that, Annabeth. I thought we tell each other these things.”

“Just because we’re soulmates doesn’t mean we have to share everything,” Annabeth snaps.

She looks like she regrets the words as soon as they’re out, but it’s too late. She way she’d said the word _soulmates,_ like it was the most disgusting word…it’s enough for him to understand, for the last shred of hope to leave his body. The damage has been done, and Percy suddenly wants nothing more than for her to leave him alone.

“So that’s it,” he says calmly. “When do you leave?”

“Today or tomorrow,” she says. Then— “Percy—”

“Save it,” he says.

She stands, walks to the front door. Her hands are shaking. Her little sniff indicates that she’s crying. Percy shuts his eyes, swallowing down another cough. It sucks. It sucks that she’s breaking his heart and he still doesn’t want to see her cry.

 “I think it’s best for the both of us if I leave for a little while,” Annabeth whispers. Percy’s too broken to ask her what this means.

She walks to her room. Coughs. “I’m sorry. This…it’s not permanent, okay? I’ll be back soon. Just…I need some time to be alone and…think.”

Without waiting for a response, she shuts the door behind her, letting out another cough as she does so. For a long time, he waits pathetically at the doorway, hoping she’ll come back, run into his arms, and cry that she’s made a terrible mistake.

But she doesn’t. She leaves, and so does Percy’s last shred of hope for himself.

**/**

It would suck if he died on his birthday, Percy thinks ruefully as he pulls on a shirt, coughs up a full flower, and pulls on his shoes.

He’s having a relatively quiet dinner party with his friends: he’d gone to visit his mother in the morning, and she’d made him blue pancakes and kissed him on both cheeks and held his face in both hands, looked him in the eye, and told him he was going to have a great life ahead of him.

Well.

He hadn’t felt like going back to his apartment — it would only remind that Annabeth wasn’t there for his birthday — she hadn’t visited since January, and now he only sees her in passing at Piper’s or on the road —so he’d gone over to Jason and Piper’s, where they’d cooed at him for being a year older, are you sure you can make it up the stairs, grandpa? It had been just the distracted he’d needed.

Dinner goes pretty well — unless you count Leo hitting on the waitresses while Calypso cackled and took his money when they didn’t even bat an eyelid his way — but Percy’d gotten a bunch of really cool presents, like a new pair of swim goggles, a bunch of cool posters, a book (“I’m dyslexic!” he yelps at Rachel) and a new goldfish (he names it Triton). They all talk and laugh like the old days, and Percy does have a lot of fun, but it’s with a twinge of bitterness. Annabeth hadn’t even texted him a happy birthday, hadn’t shown up for the dinner, but he tries hard to forget it. Maybe she’s busy, he thinks, of course she has better, more important things to discuss with her mother.

Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, though.

Percy walks home alone, stifling coughs that he knows will bite him in the ass later, perhaps in the form of an extra-large flower, but he finally makes it home and wrenches open the door.

Immediately he knows something is wrong, and he thanks his lucky stars that he’d made it up to his apartment instead of collapsing embarrassingly on the street.

He collapses now, though, unceremoniously, on the floor, where he lies on his back and coughs, and coughs, and coughs until he thinks maybe his chest is on fire. Flower after flower tumbles out of his mouth, sticky with his spit, until he looks like he’s lying in a bed of them.

It hurts. Percy’d gotten into loads of scrapes as a kid — he’d fallen from trees, scraped his knees skateboarding, hit the freezing cold water of the swimming pool when his coach had pushed him off the highest diving board. He’s had his heart broken, kind of. He’s survived getting beaten up by bullies, survived losing his father, survived an abusive stepfather. Nothing, he thinks, hurts as much as this.

Even if he hadn’t known that the flower was in his lungs, he would’ve guessed it now, because he can really _feel_ just how much his lungs have weakened. Every breath he takes is shaky, ragged. Percy remembers how he used to take a single, deep breath before making a dive into the pool during swimming competitions. If he did that now, he’d surely tear something important and die on the spot.

This is a stupid way to die, he thinks. Alone in his apartment, coughing up flowers — he halts his train of thought, coughing up another little purple forget-me-not, before resuming — alone in his apartment, feeling like a total coward and completely, wholly unloved.

He hadn’t told Annabeth. He hadn’t told anyone. Maybe that’s the thing he regrets most. He’d like to have told her how much he loved her, how real it felt. There had been moments when he’d really thought she felt something too. He’d like to tell her to live a good life, without any regrets —

The door slams open, and Percy winces at the noise.

“Percy?” comes a voice; his heart does a familiar little skip at the sound — it’s Annabeth, it’s Annabeth, she’s here, why is she here, she hadn’t forgotten him after all —

He can’t reply, so he just coughs feebly, and he hears approaching footsteps, then a gasp as she drops down to his side, holding something in her hand that looks oddly like a blue cupcake.  Unable to stop himself, he coughs a flower right into her lap.

“Percy.” She sounds horrified, and when he squints at her, he sees that there are tears in her eyes as she picks up the flower with a vibrating hand. “Percy, what…” She glances at the flower in her hand, and her voice turns panicked — “You have Hanahaki? You have Hanahaki — why didn’t you tell me — I’ve got to…I’ve got to call an ambulance —”

“Annabeth,” he says. His own worry has vanished, watching hers, and left him with a sense of calm, resigned acceptance.

“Percy, shut up, shut up, I’m calling an ambulance, why didn’t you tell me —” She’s dialling numbers frantically on her phone, the cupcake discarded. It has blue icing and blue sprinkles. “Hello, hi, I’m at number three-oh-five, Upper East Side, my friend’s in trouble —” She hangs up and turns to Percy again. “Okay, they’re on the way, help is on the way, just hang on —” She’s sobbing uncontrollably now, tears rolling down her cheeks, dropping down onto his face.

“Percy.” Her chest is heaving, and she puts her head in his chest as she sobs, “Why, why, why didn’t you tell me?”

His response comes after a painful silence.

“Because…” he wheezes, “because…I love you, Annabeth.” He continues before she can respond. “I…I don’t know since when, but I-I think I always have been in love with you, and it’s okay that you don’t…love me back, I just. I ju-just want you to know that I’m glad you’re my soulmate, I’m glad I met you…because I think you’re amazing, and I love you, like a lot, and I’ll always love you—” The coughs start up again before he can continue.

Annabeth has stilled, but now she almost forces herself to move. She’s crying again. He doesn’t want her to cry because of him. “Percy…”

His eyes flutter shut, and he croaks, “I-I’m sorry…can’t breathe—”

“Percy!” She is screaming, voice shrill. “Someone-someone help! Percy! Percy! Hang on! The ambulance is on the way! Percy! Listen to me! I lo —”

And he passes out.

**/**

Annabeth and Piper sit on the hospital floor. Sally and Paul are talking to the doctor a few feet away, and Jason’s gone to get them all some drinks — it’s been about eight hours since Percy was admitted, and he’s still not showing any signs of getting better. Guilt isn’t a strong enough word for what Annabeth feels.

Piper lets out a small, tremulous sigh.

“Have yours gone?” she asks Annabeth in a low voice.

Annabeth lets go of a long breath. “Yeah. Yeah, they —” her voice quavers embarrassingly — “they died the moment he said he was in love with me, it was like I could feel the flower wither in my lungs. I-I —” And suddenly, the tears begin to fall. “Piper, I’m such a horrible person, oh god —”

“Annabeth —”

“He made me soup when I was sick. He let me live in his apartment. He let me come to his house for Christmas. He introduced me to his parents, he listened to me when I was in a bad mood, he’d buy me new pencils whenever he saw that I was running out, he turned the music down whenever I was working, he made coffee on days when he knew I’d wake up early to study, he left me chocolates when I was on my fucking period.” Annabeth buries her face in shaking palms. “He’s stupid and stubborn and a total dork, and I love him, Piper, I love him so much.” She takes a breath, tears still coming down in earnest, staining her jeans. “I love him so much, why didn’t I just tell him?”

“You did,” Piper soothes, “you did…”

“It was too late, I was too late.” Her chest feels like it’s going to collapse in on itself. “I had months to tell him, _months,_ and I-I was too scared, I tried to distance myself, and I only made it worse —”

“You didn’t know,” Piper says firmly. “You didn’t know he had Hanahaki, and that’s not your fault…it’s not like he knew you had it, too.”

Annabeth is silent, chest shaking, watching the doctor shake his head, Sally bow her head. “This is my fault.”

“Ann —”

“It is.” Her fingers curl into a fist, resting against her lap. “I could’ve told him. I could’ve saved him.”

**/**

“So, what now?” Jason asks.

Sally lifts her head and gazes around at them all — a ragtag bunch of Percy’s friends, including Julia from the coffee shop, who’s in tears, Leo, Grover, Juniper, Hazel, Frank, Nico, Reyna, Will, Thalia, and Rachel. Chiron, who she remembers as Percy’s mentor in high school, sits next to Paul, a hand on his shoulder.

“The doctor says surgery is the only option,” Sally says, with a quick, sympathetic glance to Annabeth. “He…he’s…not good. He’s breathing with support, but if we wait too long…”

Annabeth nearly chokes. “Can I see him?”

Everyone turns to her. Their gazes are not even blaming, but more like pity. They should be blaming her. Annabeth waltzed into Percy’s life — all of their lives — and left it in tatters. She ignored them for nearly half a year, and yeah, while her actions hadn’t come from a bad place, she is still to blame. Why aren’t they blaming her? Annabeth hates how nice they’re being. Annabeth hates herself.

Sally shakes her head. “Darling, I’m sorry, but they aren’t even letting Paul and I in—”

“I won’t go into the room,” she says in a rush. “Just, please, I’d like to see him. Please.”

Sally and Paul share a look, which is sceptical at first, but then softens into acceptance. Sally holds out her hand. “Come with me.”

Percy’s room is down the hall, a small, dingy thing with a small glass window in the door. It smells even more intensely of hospital than the rest of the building, but there’s another scent in the air, something like blood and flowers. It makes her a little sick, but they reach the door and Sally nods carefully, stepping a little behind.

Annabeth peers through the little window.

She can barely see Percy in the mess of machines attached to his arms and chest, but she finds his face. His eyes are closed, and his chest barely stirs. Annabeth wants to bust into the room, shake him awake, kiss him senseless and scream that she loves him, but — well, she might do even more damage in the process, so she places her hand on the glass window, focuses on an uncovered patched on skin on his arm — which is decorated by their soulmate tattoo — and concentrates.

She doesn’t know what she was expecting: what, that Percy would heal miraculously with the power of her love which she’d transmitted across the room from the doorway? But it still hurts when she waits, waits for a solid ten minutes, and nothing happens.

Defeated, and with tears prickling at her eyes, she turns to find Sally with a similar expression of dim hopefulness on her face. Annabeth wants to cry and hit something because of unfair it all is — how that, if this were a movie, Percy would’ve woken up for sure, they’d have confessed their love for each other and shared a kiss amidst all the beeping machines that screamed that he was alive.

Life isn’t a movie, she knows, and she can’t bring him back to life just because all she wants right now in the world is for him to wake up, if only just for her to tell him how much she loves him. Because she does, she really does.

And now, she thinks with a sinking feeling, he’ll never know.

Sally’s arms are open and Annabeth finds herself running into them — how Percy’s mother isn’t cursing her and yelling at her, she’ll never know — and she sobs into her shoulder. Sally cries too, a little, and pets her hair, and tells Annabeth that it’ll be okay.

“Get the surgery,” Annabeth whispers, when she’s gained a little more control over herself. “Sally, go tell the doctor.”

Sally takes a small step backward, eyes wide. “Bu- Annabeth, even aside from the fact that he could forget you forever, and the fact that, well, he clearly didn’t want the surgery, we-we can’t even begin to afford —”

“I’ll pay.” Her face is smeared with tears, and her voice shakes, but if Annabeth is sure of one thing, it’s that she cannot lose Percy Jackson. “I’ll cover the costs, Sally, don’t worry.”

“Annabeth.” Sally’s voice is painful, like she doesn’t want to believe it. “This is...this is a huge decision, and it’s a lot of money, I can’t just —”

“I was born into a lot of money, and it’s just me and my mother now, we have more than we need,” Annabeth says in a rush. “Sally, please, this is…all my fault. Please let me do this. I don’t care if he doesn’t know me when he wakes up, I just couldn’t bear it if he…if he died, and-and I didn’t —”

Sally just stares at her; Annabeth clenches her fists until her knuckles are white. She knows the consequences of what she’s doing. Spending this much money on her soulmate…her mother is going to be furious. She’s going to throw her out of the house, maybe even disown her for her weakness. Annabeth searches her mind for regret, sadness, at this realization, and finds none.

Percy comes first. He’s always come first, even if she’d never, ever shown it. Annabeth isn’t going to make the same mistakes she made before.

“He _needs_ this,” she tries again. “Please, Sally, let me do this for your family.”

The older woman lets out a broken sob, and then flings her arms around Annabeth’s shoulders once more, her entire body shaking as she says, “Oh…thank you, Annabeth, thank you.”

“Don’t worry, Sally,” Annabeth says. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of him.”

**/**

Percy wakes up to a stark white world dotted with little lights on the ceiling. He coughs once, then twice. He’s in a hospital gown. The air smells like antiseptic. Why is he here?

“Uhm,” he tries. His voice comes out deep and gravelly.

Next to him, in a chair, someone leaps to their feet — his mother, Percy realizes with warmth, and she blinks at him, before bursting into tears, lunging at him, cradling his face and saying again and again, “You’re awake, you’re awake, you’re awake-”

“Of course I am,” says Percy, bewildered. He doesn’t know what he’s in the hospital for, but it must’ve been something serious if his mom is crying this uncontrollably: she kneels next to his bed as he pats her hair clumsily. Her hair is frizzy, matted into clumps — how long has he been in here?

The door opens — bringing in Paul, whose face crumples when Percy smiles at him, Jason, who swears in victory, Piper, who bursts into tears, and two unfamiliar people. One is evidently a doctor, dressed in a white coat and who bustles around the room checking Percy’s stats, and the other is a blonde girl wearing a long-sleeved grey shirt, who enters the room cautiously, as though feeling she doesn’t belong there.

“Who are you?” he blurts out to her hoarsely, unable to stop himself. He flushes immediately as soon as the words are out, realizing just how rude they sound, but it was as though his mouth had moved on its own. Something about her is different, as though she is very important to him, even though he’s sure that he’s never seen her before in his life.

Her reaction is immediate, but fleeting. She stops in her tracks, and her entire frame seems to droop, face tilting downwards, bottom lip trembling, eyes losing a little light. He cannot think for a single reason for his words to have caused such a reaction, but before he can comment on it, her face has changed back into the expression of polite concern.

“Percy,” Sally says carefully, “you don’t know who this is?”

Percy stares at her, searching his mind as best he can, but there’s nothing even remotely familiar about this girl, even though she is very pretty, in a striking sort of way.

“No,” he says honestly. “Should I?”

There’s a brief period of silence during which the doctor excuses himself and the remaining occupants of the room gaze around at each other helplessly, daring each other to speak first. Finally, Jason steps forward.

“This is Annabeth Chase,” he says. “She was the one who found you, brought you here. She even paid for your treatment.”

“Wow,” Percy breathes, gazing at her. She steps a little closer, smiling slightly as though it is causing her great pain to do so. “Wow. I guess we owe you a lot, then.”

“It was nothing,” she dismisses immediately. Her voice is kind, even if it shakes a little. “Anyone in my position would’ve done the same.”

“But still,” he says, “You saved my life. Thank you.”

“It was nothing,” she whispers, “but no problem.”

“What I want to know is,” he says jovially, “and, well, you don’t need to answer this if you don’t want to, but why would you, a total stranger, spend so much money on someone you don’t even know?”

There are strange reactions all around the room as he says this — Piper winces, Jason and Paul look at Annabeth with sympathy, and his mother’s grip on his hand loosens, but the girl looks at him steadily with hard grey eyes the color of thunderclouds.

“I lost my father,” she says, “to the same disease you were suffering from. It was the least I could do.”

“Thank you so much,” he says, “I owe you my life, and I’ll try to repay you as soon as I’m on my feet again. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, anything —”

“There’s really no need,” she says.

It’s quiet again, save for the soft beeping of the machine to the side.

“If you don’t mind,” Percy says awkwardly, gesturing around him.

“Oh, shit, sorry. Of course.” The girl takes several quick steps backward, her hands shaking, a heartbreaking look of panic on her face that Percy can’t understand. “Of course, I’ll leave you to be with your family…” She turns around and scurries to the door. Her hair is a warm blonde, the color of the sunrays through a curtain.

“Annabeth —” Piper tries, but Annabeth has already wrenched the door open with almost brute, desperate strength, and run outside. The door slowly swings back into position, but Percy thinks he hears the sound of sobbing before it closes.

**/**

Very slowly, Percy goes back to what he considers normalcy.

Recovering is hard. Whatever he’d been hospitalized for — he’d been told nothing more than “a minor heart and lung issue,” by the doctor and he hadn’t asked anything more, but everyone assured him the problem was completely gone with no chance of returning. That’s enough for Percy, and he goes back to living in his apartment: Jason stays over for a few weeks, but then he leaves when Percy assures him he’s fine, ad Percy’s left alone with an extra empty room and an odd hole in his life.

Annabeth, the girl who’d found him collapsed on the stairs when his lungs failed, or so everyone says, eventually becomes a staple in Percy’s life. She’s great, with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue, and Percy is drawn to her for reasons he can’t understand.

Every night, he’s plagued with dreams that feel too realistic to be fictional. Percy is, in most of these dreams, hunched over in a fit of brutal coughs. He coughs up blood, and then something else small and blue, and then he wakes up in a cold sweat.

He tells Annabeth about his dreams and her expression isn’t just shock or fear or even worry, it’s panic, but then her eyebrows knead together in concern and she’s asking if he’s okay, if he’d like to go see the doctor, if he’d like her to come over on some nights and check on him.

He agrees to the last suggestion.

So Annabeth walks over the next night with Lord of the Rings in one hand and sandwiches in the other, and they both curl up on the sofa. Not together: she’s way over at the other end, tucked into a blanket and looking oddly vulnerable. Percy’s struck with the odd notion of familiarity. That they’ve done this before. Which is ridiculous, because he’s known Annabeth for maybe three months, max, and she’s never slept the night at his place.

They watch Lord of the Rings, Annabeth imitating Gimli horrendously, and Percy is laughing and he’s hit, once again, with _déjà vu,_ like he’s living his life in a loop.

“Thanks,” he says, close to the end of the first movie, “Lord of the Rings is my favourite.” He watches her closely as he asks, “How’d you know?”

Annabeth’s poker face is intact for a few solid seconds, but then the corner of her lips turn downward, like she can’t hold it anymore. “Just a guess.”

“Okay,” he says, and then he drops it, focusing back on the movie. He feels Annabeth looking at him, but when he glances quickly back at her, her eyes are fixed determinedly on the screen.

He wakes up with a gasp. Annabeth is shaking his shoulder, and when his eyes fly open, she breathes a sigh of relief, pushing a glass of water into his hand and asking him repeatedly, “Are you okay? Can you breathe? Do you need anything?”

“No, I’m fine now,” he says. He looks at her, unable to tear his eyes away, which might be embarrassing for him to think about later, but somehow the sight of her is grounding, and he feels his breathing slow.

The end credits of the second movie is playing behind them.

Annabeth kneels down next to him. “Percy…you should go to bed.”

He’s not going to argue. Annabeth stands with him and walks him to his room.

“Do you have sleeping pills?” she asks.

“They don’t work,” he replies.

She looks uncomfortable. “Okay, I think we’ll take you to the doctor tomorrow. I’ll check up on you in the morning, okay?”

“Can you stay?” The question is out into the open before he can stop it. He’s probably really crossing a line here, but now he can’t take it back. Weirdly, he doesn’t want to.

“Percy…” She glances briefly at him, then away, towards the window. “Okay. I’ll sleep in the other room. I guess it’s not a good idea to leave you alone for the night.”

“Okay. Okay.” He takes a single step into his room. It’s dark, and Percy suddenly doesn’t want to be alone.

He turns to her, and finds her staring at him with a heartbreaking look on her face that he doesn’t entirely understand. The look is gone at once.

“Everything okay?” she asks.

“Could you stay with me until I sleep?” He should feel ashamed of himself, asking her this. He should feel foolish and embarrassed and reluctant, but he somehow knows that he won’t mind a bit.

“Yeah.” Her voice is a little hoarse; she clears her throat. “Yeah, sure.”

They both walk to the bed, where Percy lies down, feeling a little numb. Annabeth hovers awkwardly above him for a second before his desk chair and moving to sit down, but Percy, already too far gone to care, pats the space next to him clumsily.

It’s hard to discern the look on her face in the dark, but she sits at the edge of the bed next to him.

Slowly, cautiously, almost like she’s reaching out to touch a wounded animal, she encases his hand in both of hers and holds it in her lap. Her skin is lukewarm, and Percy feels an undercurrent of sparks that he’s too tired to take proper notice of.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

She released the grip on his hand and reaches out to smooth the hair on his forehead back. She doesn’t stop, and Percy soon relaxes into her touch. It feels nice, like home.

“Anytime,” she says in a thick voice.

His eyes are already closing. He searches the darkness for her face, and he thinks he sees the sparkle of a single tear dropping off her chin.

“What—” he begins, but then she’s shushing him and saying, “Sleep, Percy, okay?” and Percy isn’t in any state to argue. He closes his eyes.

He doesn’t know how long she sits there while he sleeps, but when he wakes up, his hand is still warm from the heat of her touch, and he hadn’t had any nightmares at all.

**/**

Percy feels like he’s living in a bubble.

Because something is going on, something has happened since he’s been admitted. He can’t put his finger on it, but it feels like everyone else is walking on eggshells around him, hiding some big secret he’s not a part of.

There’s also the whole matter of his soulmark. He can’t, for the life of him, remember where, how, or who he got it from: everyone changes the subject immediately when he brings it up, and Percy’s grown tired of asking. He’s tired of the lot of them whispering behind his back when they think he can’t hear, things like Poor Percy and We can’t keep this up forever. Percy’s close to breaking them, he knows, but he’s also close to breaking himself.

Annabeth, who’s staying over a few nights a week, is something of a mystery to him. She’s casual with him, but he can tell she’s holding herself back: she’s also ridiculously close with his friends and family for someone who just met them all the day she took Percy to the hospital.

Still, he can’t deny he enjoys her company. The nights she stays over are always really fun, and he kind of forgets all the mysteries he’s wrapped up in. He also quite enjoys the feeling of his hand in hers, almost unabashedly so. He doesn’t tell her anything, of course, unconsciously aware that it’s just not allowed, but when he tells Jason, his friend fixes him with a weird look and then just shrugs.

“Go for it, man, if you want,” he says.

“That’s not it,” Percy says immediately. Because it’s not. Well, not entirely, if he’s being totally honest. He likes Annabeth, he’s definitely attracted to her, but there’s something underneath the surface, something he’s so, so close to touching. Something that would explain everything — the way he feels around Annabeth, the reason she’s pulling back, the reason he’s in this bubble in the first place.

He looks at Jason, who’s guarding his expression carefully. To an outsider, he would look merely pensive, but Percy’s known Jason for years and years, and he realizes, with a sinking feeling, that Jason knows , Jason knows the thing that maybe everyone knows, everyone except him, and nobody is telling Percy...but why?

“Okay,” he mutters finally, “I’ll figure something out.”

Back at home, Annabeth’s already lounging on the couch, watching the local news. The screen shows the outside of a hospital, where a reporter is talking to a doctor. The headline travelling from right to left across the screen reads: ANOTHER HANAHAKI VICTIM CLAIMED IN AMERICA.

She notices him watching and quickly moves to change the channel, but Percy holds up his hand, telling her to leave it. He makes his way to the sofa, eyes on the TV. Annabeth looks a little traumatized as she folds her legs beneath her, giving him room to sit. He sits down heavily. 

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah.” Her voice is small, and it looks like she’s avoiding his gaze on purpose. “It’s just…my dad died of Hanahaki. It’s a little hard for me to watch. Can I change the channel?”

And it’s like, it’s like—

It’s like being slapped across the face for the first time, like jumping into the pool on a hot day, like being shaken awake after a deep sleep. And Percy’s head is filled with an onslaught of information, and he’s reeling backward, falling back onto the cushions, eyes wide, hands shaking, and a single sentence being played and replayed in his head. Annabeth’s voice, Annabeth’s words, one of the first things she’s said to him that day in the hospital:

“I lost my father to the same disease you were suffering from. It was the least I could do.”

I lost my father to the same disease you were suffering from —

It’s just…my dad died of Hanahaki—

And the bubble pops.

“Percy? Percy?” Annabeth’s waving her hand in front of his face, looking concerned. “Percy? You here?”

Bits and pieces of his life flash in his mind’s eye like a PowerPoint presentation. Annabeth laughing, imitating Gimli from Lord of the Rings. The feeling of familiarity, the feeling of we’ve done this before . Holding Annabeth’s hand. His soulmate tattoo flaring to life before his very eyes. Coughing out the flowers, first as petals, then as a whole.

Those hadn’t been nightmares, he realizes with a jolt that makes him sit upright. They’d been flashbacks. Memories.

He stands, covering his head with his hands, and walks in the general direction of his room. Vaguely, he hears Annabeth calling after him, then following him. His entire body feels like it’s going to implode.

He hadn’t had a lung disease, he hadn’t had a weak heart. He’d had a completely different kind of lung problem because of his weak heart, because he’d been too weak to act on his feelings.

He’d had Hanahaki.

Thinking it aloud calms him, makes him pause. He’d had Hanahaki, he’d lost his memories, but now they’re back, they’re back, they’re back—

He turns to face her, and she’s stopped by the dining table, one hand resting on the tabletop.

“Percy, you okay?” Her brows are all scrunched together. “You wanna sleep?”

He doesn’t bother choosing his words carefully. “I had Hanahaki.”

She’s silent.

“Didn’t I?” When it goes unanswered, he asks a little more forcefully, “ Didn’t I?”

With a start, he sees that she’s trembling violently, hugging her own torso. It’s after what seems like an age that she finally raises her head and meets his eyes.

“Yes,” she whispers.

He takes a step towards her. “And the one I loved…” He points almost triumphantly at his tattoo as another piece of the puzzle falls into place, as he realizes Annabeth’s only ever worn long-sleeved shirts around him, or else applied heavy makeup to her arms, flinching that one time he’d touched her elbow, “My soulmate…it’s you, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she says again. Her eyes are rimmed with red, but no tears escape. Her body is rigid and her fists are clenched, like she’s expecting a fight. Like she’s expecting Percy to blame her.

He reaches her, and carefully lifts her arm until it’s parallel to the ground. She’s wearing a black sweater today.

He pushes back the sleeve until her soulmate tattoo is visible, covered under a thin layer of powder. He lifts up his own arm to compare. The tattoos are identical.

They’re soulmates. They’re soulmates. Percy’s been looking for answers so long and they’d been right here on her arm, in her wistful, longing glances, in the barely-concealed sobs at night, in the way she touches him and takes care of him and squeezes his hand tight when she thinks she’s asleep.

She’s closed her eyes like she can’t hear to look at him, and a single tear runs down the side of her nose.

“You must hate me,” she whispers, bowing her head so that all he can‘t see her face at all, only the golden of her hair.

“Why would I?” He lets their hands drop, and Annabeth shivers like a kitten in the rain.

“Because.” She covers her face with her palms and lets out a single, broken sob. “I ran away — I thought being apart would help, but I ruined your life, Percy. I almost killed you.”

“That was my choice,” he says softly. “I figured a life without loving you was no life at all.”

She’s crying in earnest, now. “I-I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

“You must’ve known,” he says. “When you came in and saw me in the flowers. You must’ve known I meant to die.”

“I know,” she whispers. “And I couldn’t let that happen.” She lifts her head again, and her eyes are fiery despite their wetness. “I figured a life without you was no life at all.”

He blinks at having his words thrown back at him, then takes a half-step forward. He can see every tear clinging to her lashes.

“Did you love me too?” he asks.

“I do,” she says.

A step closer. “Present tense.”

“Present tense,” she confirms, a stern figure even with her face all red and splotchy.

He’s almost smiling. He wants to smile so, so badly. “You aren’t going to ask me if I love you too?”

“It’d be rude,” she mutters.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, Annabeth.”

“No.”

His fingers touch her face. “Annabeth.”

“Don’t say it,” she begs. “Don’t.”

“I love you,” he says, and she begins to sob.

“I almost killed you,” she hiccups.

“You saved my life,” he says.

“But—“

“Shut up,” he says. “Shut up. We love each other, and, even better, there aren’t any flowers being coughed up by anyone. This should be easy.”

“Well.” She lets out an almighty sniff, rubbing her eyes. “You should know by now that I’m never going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain.”

He snorts, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into him. Momentarily lost in his chest, she finally pokes her head out and rests her forehead against his neck. Her face is wet from all the crying: he finds that he’s got tears in his eyes, too, and blinks rapidly to get them out. They fall off his face and into her hair. It’s honestly really uncomfortable, but he feels at peace. This is the most steady he’s felt since, well, maybe forever.

Never going to make things easy for him huh?

Well, if things go like they have all this time, painful though they might be, but ending with them in each other’s arms, feeling relieved and content and oh, so happy all at once, then—

“I’m fine with that,” he says.

**/**

 

**Author's Note:**

> ⋄ and they all lived happily ever after  
> ⋄ annabeth got her hanahaki shortly after new year's: she really wanted to kiss percy and she saw him kissing rachel and  
> she coughed up a hyacinth (percy's favorite flower). she was really scared and she didn't deal with it the way percy did:  
> she thought the diseased would go if she didn't see him, so she moved out  
> ⋄ the store where percy always got annabeth chocolates from is called Ixcacao's: Ixcacao is actually the Mayan goddess of  
> chocolate so hey, who says reading fic isn't educational  
> ⋄ [ here ](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Hanahaki_Disease) and [ here ](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hanahaki%20disease) is where I got definitions and stuff for  
> hanahaki so thanks v much to them ayy  
> ⋄ annabeth's reaction for when percy got her chocolate while she was on her period is actually me when a male friend did  
> the same  
> ⋄ yes i know percy's sister's name is estelle but i hate that name so much oh my god isn't stella much cuter?? also i made  
> her older for the purpose of this story so chill  
> ⋄ that's it i think
> 
> this fic is gloriously unbeta'd and i haven't written as percy in ages and this probably rife with grammar errors, pls forgive my impatient ass
> 
> as always thanks to [ percyyoulittleshit ](http://www.percyyoulittleshit.tumblr.com) for helping me with ideas (the flowers being forget-me-nots came from her) as well as my bbs [ glove23](http://www.glove23.tumblr.com) and [ didyouidid ](http://www.didyouidid.tumblr.com) for always being super excited about my fic and really motivating me to finish.
> 
> hmu on my [ tumblr ](http://www.seaweedbraens.tumblr.com) if you wanna chat, i also update about fics and stuff, and i now have a [ ko-fi ](https://ko-fi.com/W7W3668K) if any of you feel like supporting this brokeass, posts-once-in-six-months writer (pls help a girl out)
> 
> drop some feedback if you can and i hope you all enjoyed, have a great year ahead!!!


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